Meg versus The Blurb

June 8, 2016June 8, 2016 ~ Meg ~ 60 Comments

I’ve reached that stage in novel development that I like the least — writing the synopsis, or blurb that goes on the back cover of the book or in the description on the Amazon page. How do you distill 90,000+ words down to a few sentences or a short paragraph? And write those sentences in such a way as to suck your potential readers into buying your novel? Ugh. It’s agonising!

Why is it so hard? Fellow writers, do you struggle with this part, too?

The blurb needs to convey the mystery, the suspense, the drama of the book without giving away the details or the ending. It also has to be concise and attention grabbing. I either end up with three sentences or an entire page. Finding the happy middle ground is elusive. So as I work on the blurb for my fourth novel, Tainted Inheritance, which save for a few details, is ready to be published, I rant, I rail, I stomp and I curse.

Last week, I felt so frustrated and stuck, I was ready to throw in the towel. Say “the hell with it” and shelve the whole thing. All because of a blurb. Ridiculous, I know… But after a good wallow, a little too much bourbon, a cry on a friend’s (Kevin’s) shoulder and an orchid to cheer me up, I got angry. What?!? Angry, you say? How does that help?

This is not the path I would recommend to you all, but for me getting angry energizes me. It sets me on fire and it feels kind of good. Maybe that makes me a dangerous psychopath, I’m not really sure. Whatever the case, it works for me. I spit out a poem Just Burn in about 15 minutes, Monday night and with the frustration out of my system, I moved on, rejuvenated.

I’m nailing that blurb today and then the cover is next.

What is the lesson here? You want me to get stuff done? Go ahead and piss me off…

Header Image courtesy Flickr.com

Revisiting Book One: cover option

February 4, 2016February 4, 2016 ~ Meg ~ 42 Comments

I’ve been playing around with a new cover option for Three Empty Frames, book one in my series. The current cover was designed with Create Space’s online cover creator and one of their standard templates. Well, you heard what happened with that! Here’s what the cover looks like now:

As you can probably tell, this isn’t a high-resolution image, which is part of the problem. If I want to take the cover with me to Smashwords, opening up the options of publishing the book on Nook, iBooks, etc. the image quality has to be better. So I’d love to hear what you think of this option instead:

Ready to “Run For It?” Book Three is Out!

January 13, 2016January 12, 2016 ~ Meg ~ 56 Comments

After a lot of hard work, an actual editor’s polishing, and a professional cover design, Book Three of The Bucks County series is here! This is Joni and Graham’s story. Even if you haven’t read the first two books of the series, you will recognize Graham from the prequel short stories: Lips Like Sugar and Dear Mr. Fantasy that appeared in Sunday’s Song Lyric in the last couple months. Run For It is available in print and e-book on Amazon. You can find it here. I hope you all will enjoy:

Joni Cooper is in the best shape of her life. In fact, she’s training for the Boston Marathon. So why does she feel like the last kid picked for the team? Mostly because her two best friends have fallen in love with a pair of handsome brothers. It looks like she’s stuck with the third and final brother, Graham, as an escort for both weddings. Even though Graham is gorgeous and successful, he’s also irritating as sin. Will the two of them manage to call a truce until the two couples are married? Or will the sparks these two generate erupt into a five alarm fire?