I
have a contemporary erotic romance coming out in September, and I’ve been
stressing over the book blurb. This is probably because I’m a pantser and not a
plotter. A plotter would know exactly what the conflict is between the characters,
so writing a story blurb would be a piece of cake.
Except
relationships are never that cut-and-dried. Not even in fiction.
My
heroine has control issues. A difficult childhood has made her determined to
control every aspect of her life. She’s deathly afraid of flying, but it’s
rooted in the fact she can’t control airplanes (or gravity, for that matter).
My
hero also has control issues. While in the military, he lost men under his
command, so he’s determined to remain single. He never wants to be responsible
for another human life, least of all a wife’s.
The
conflict between my characters’ control issues drives the book. But how on
earth do you convey all of the above (and throw in a mysterious fortune teller,
too) in the standard two or three sentences of a blurb?
All
authors know that next to a book cover, the blurb is the most important thing
to hook a reader into buying a book. It has to grab a reader’s attention as effectively
as the opening line of the story. See? You can understand why I’m stressing.
Some
nights I go to sleep vowing to become a plotter.
Except
I never will, because I enjoy the thrill of having the germ of an idea but
letting my characters tell me their story. That’s why I write.
What
about you? Is an entire book easier to write or is the blurb simpler? I’d love to hear about your process,
especially if you’re a pantser like me who loses sleep, weight (and
fingernails) trying to write the all-important blurb.
Tell
me your secrets!
Leigh
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