Heart of the Crystal has a blurb!

[marfisk]

Okay, it's a first pass and who knows what it will end up with, but this actually represents the story and asks those sort of blurby questions that a blurb should do :). Contemporary Romance for those who don't remember or didn't follow that process.


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Bethany Michaels devotes her life to protecting her mother, an aging singer, from tabloid reporters. She has little time or energy for normal relationships. When she crosses paths with Damien Donnellin, she craves more. But is he interested in her? Or just using her to get Isobel's traumatic story?
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Comments

[mikandra.livejournal.com]

maybe you could add what is special about Damien?

[marfisk]

Hmm, good thought. I have to be careful though because the first first runthroughs were a mess trying to get both their perspectives in :).

Thanks.

[ruvdraba.livejournal.com]

And why do we care? What are the stakes? What are the consequences? How will her life change if he is interested in her? How will her life change if he's not? and how does this link to her responsibilities to keep her mother from scandal?

[marfisk]

Hmm, good questions for almost any other blurb. This is for a contemporary romance novel and so the stakes and consequences are known from the start. I modeled this after the blurbs in the eHarlequin newsletter, so it's targeting a specific market.

However, I didn't really think it through until you pointed it out.

The stakes are whether she can find love and reconcile her responsibilities with it. The consequences are potentially the loss of a chance at love because of her mother. Her life will change radically, because she'll live happily ever after. And since this is a romance, the reader knows it'll turn out all right somehow but that the journey as signified by her doubts is what compels us to read.

And bringing this more generally, I would recommend that anyone writing in a specific genre sign up for the newsletters of prominent publishers in that area. Know your blurbs. Know how the publishers get the reader's attention. If I were to write an SF blurb for a romance, it would focus on the wrong things and only show I didn't know my intended market.

That said, I entered this novel in a contest earlier this year. Got back some feedback, but didn't really get why it had been cut out so soon...well, besides the fact that with contemporary they included paranormal, a completely different subgenre ;). Anyway, when I went back to read the materials I had sent in, I realized I'd failed the basic rule: in romance, the female lead has the starring role. It doesn't matter that the actual tales have become more and more balanced on the male and female perspective. All the marketing material focuses on the female. What I'd done is tried to bring in both their points of view and ended up with a tangle that in no way reflected their dynamic relationship.

So anyway, thanks for the comment, and for helping me pull some things that I had gut-level out where I could poke and prod them :). I may pull this out as a separate post actually...

Cheers,
Margaret

how about this?

[(Anonymous)]

Hi Margaret,
Can I take a stab at this? Blurbs are a hobby of mine. (I know, I need more hobbies.)

I think what this needs is more punch and specific information. I generally like to create blurbs in no more than two sentences. See what you can make with the one below. (PS I called Damien a jounalist, but you can change it to author, reporter, or whatever.)

maria's 2 cents:

Bethany Michaels is protecting her mother, an aging singer with more baggage than a train station. But when journalist, Damien Donnellin enters Bethany’s life, there’s no telling if he’s stolen her heart, or the blockbuster story of her mother’s sordid life.

Let me know if this helps.
Maria
www.mariazannini.com

Re: how about this?

[marfisk]

Yeah, I normally try to keep it around 3 sentences: Character, Situation, Cliffhanger.

This was actually an experiment (and I should have said so from the start) of modeling the blurb on existing Harlequin back cover blurbs. That provoked more sentences and a little on format.

As far as the style, I like yours better than mine. It has more pizzaz. As far as the story, it's a different book :). Damien isn't actually a journalist, she just thinks he is. And her mother doesn't carry baggage from her past...she doesn't even remember that it's over.

Thanks for the example though. I may be able to snag some from it :).