Friday, February 9, 2018

Fiction Friday: What's in a Blurb?

Blurb Writer

As I mentioned in last week’s progress report, I hired the inimitable Kat Sheridan to write back cover copy for The Demon Always Wins. 

Although it’s possible to write your own cover copy, and many writers do, I find it difficult to get the proper distance from my work to do that well. Kat is great at what she does, and really reasonable. Even at minimum wage, I would have spent more trying to write the thing myself.
So, I went online and filled out her Standard Fiction Work Order. It asks for title, author, short description and then descriptions of the two main characters, along with any additional characters the author deems worthy of blurb space.

Kat came back with an excellent, pithy blurb that summarized the action in a way I hadn’t considered. The last line, which I'd really struggled with in my own attempts at blurbs and pitches, was brilliant Her email assured me she was willing to rework it until I was happy.
Now that I had an approach, though, I couldn’t resist tweaking it myself. With a little help from my friends from McDaniel College, I came up with the following:
Seven short weeks. That’s all the time the demon Belial has to stack up a victory for Satan and earn his promotion to Chief Executive Demon, the second most powerful position in Hell. If Belial can corrupt God’s champion within the agreed time-frame, Hell will score bragging rights—and another soul. The demon always wins, but this one is anybody’s game.
Seven short weeks. Widowed nurse Dara Strong is the ace up God's sleeve. Dara, the granddaughter of famous demon-fighters, has no problem recognizing Dr. Ben Lyle as a demon in doctor's disguise when he appears at her clinic. She kicks him out the door, but the most successful soul-stealer in the history of Hell is not about to give up so easily.
As the battle between the cosmically well-matched opponents escalates, conflict breeds passion and passion transforms into love. Caught between a victory-hungry Satan and an unforgiving God, Belial and Dara discover there may be only one way to ransom the soul of a fallen angel: sometimes you have to go through Hell to claim your heaven.
I love this blurb, but there’s always room for improvement. Feel free to offer suggestions!


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