Category: Writing

That Eureka Moment re Book Blurb -v- Physical Assault by Blueberries

A big thank you to everybody who responded to my cry of despair earlier this week in The Nightmare of Writing Your Own Amazon Book Description. You all gave me some excellent feedback, which resulted in me deciding to start from scratch. Although Version 4 was the clear favourite, it still had its flaws, the main one being that it focused more on a secondary character than my main protagonist.

So here is what I’ve come up with…

Perched on the clifftops at Helmstone-by-sea, British boarding school Toffdene exists in splendid isolation, pretending the Swinging Sixties aren’t happening outside its walls.

Janet is a science scholarship girl who believes that all paranormal phenomena have a rational explanation, until she meets a hippie pixie who lives in a dimensional transcendental toadstool.

Something stirs in the dark of the old tunnel leading from the playing fields down to the beach. Soon the teachers and pupils develop a hive mind determined to ensnare Janet in its collective consciousness. The hippie pixie might have cured Janet’s acne with a single kiss, but his claim that he can fix what’s wrong with everyone else by mending an interdimensional rift is quite another matter.

I did have a struggle over deciding whether “Swinging Sixties” is/are singular or plural in the context above. When I threw it open to discussion in a writing group I belong to on Facebook, the majority of people said it was plural. Mister is insistent that it’s singular. Two online grammar-checkers said it was okay with either and one other threw out the singular version.

Blueberries

As for those blueberries, all I can say is one person’s superfruit is another person’s  poison. There was me thinking that book marketing (especially the part about describing my product) was causing me such stress that it was giving me severe palpitations bad enough for me to think my end was nigh. The only time in the day my heart was desisting from gymnastics was first thing in the morning. But half-an-hour after my supposedly healthy breakfast, which included a handful of blueberries, my heart would go haywire. Then I remembered that my pulse had been perfectly even, at around 63 beats per minute, prior to inclusion of the little blue blighters in my morning fruit salad, so I stopped having them and, hey presto, no more palpitations.

Now I’m feeling calm, I’ve decided to run an Amazon giveaway for the next seven days now ended, where one person gets to win has won a paperback copy of Desiccation. Entrants just have to choose a number and hope that it’s the preset winning number that I’ve chosen. Unfortunately, at the moment giveaways are only happening on amazon.com, which means they’re only open to US citizens, so sorry to disappoint my fellow citizens in the UK.

Here’s wishing you all a wonderful week, and watch out for those rampaging blueberries 😉

The Nightmare of Writing Your Own Amazon Book Description

Question: What does an author do when all the advice about writing a book description for Amazon is contradictory?

Answer: She slowly goes mad.

Writer's Insanity#1

I have a big problem. My family is sick of me footling around with the words that might make or break a book sale, quite apart from the possibility that Amazon will get cheesed off with me revising my book description every other day.

Here is some of the advice out there, all of it from proclaimed experts.

  • If you don’t write a description of at least 500 words the search engine algorithms won’t pick it up
  • Use all 4000 characters allocated to you by Amazon
  • Keep it under 150 words
  • You have a few seconds to grab a buyer’s attention, so do it in two sentences
  • Put all of your keywords in the Amazon description for SEO optimisation
  • Putting your keywords in the description serves no purpose and irritates Amazon
  • Add snippets of reviews at the foot of your description
  • Amazon does not allow snippets of reviews in the description

I could give many more examples, but will stop there.

Now I’m going to ask my family of bloggers to imagine they’ve never heard of me and they’re looking to buy a book on Amazon.Desiccation ebook_image

Then I would like them to tell me which of the book descriptions below (if any) would grab them enough to commit to buying a copy of my novel. If you don’t like science fiction and fantasy, you’ll need to imagine that you love this combination of genres, just for the purpose of this exercise.

The numbered examples are in the order they were created, beginning with the one based on the blurb on the back of my book (which I no longer thinks passes muster).

Beneath the last example is a poll for you to complete. Any further feedback much appreciated.

Example 1

Autumn Term 1967, Samantha, the new head girl, intends to reign supreme and exploit every loophole in the system to her advantage. This includes running an illicit nocturnal business in the gymnasium and conducting midnight seances in the library, but she hasn’t bargained on rough London mod, Joe, entering the equation.

Scholarship girl Janet senses a disruption to the natural order, impossible to explain away with science.  Soon, the teachers and pupils start to exhibit multiple personality changes and develop a hive mentality, with Janet the despised outsider.

And now a hippie pixie who claims he’s an expert in repairing dimensions wants Janet’s help to mend what Samantha has broken before it’s too late…

Example 2

St Trinian’s meets Invasion of the Body Snatchers

Autumn Term 1967, mayhem breaks out at an élite British boarding school on the south coast of England. Samantha, the new head girl, intends to reign supreme and exploit every loophole in the system to her advantage. This includes running an illicit nocturnal business in the gymnasium and conducting midnight seances in the library, but she hasn’t bargained on London mod, Joe, entering the equation. Leader of a gang on probation for petty crimes, Joe has suffered a lifetime of bombardment by malign spirits. Now, thanks to the head girl’s flirtation with the occult, he has become the conduit for something that pales these spirits into insignificance.

Haunted by the mysterious death of the school caretaker the previous term, scholarship girl Janet senses a disruption to the natural order, impossible to explain away with science. When teachers and students start to exhibit multiple personality changes and develop a hive mentality, Janet becomes the despised outsider. Can she trust, as her protector, a hippie pixie who claims he’s an expert in repairing dimensions? And will she muster the courage to help him reverse a catastrophe that could destroy humankind?

Huddled in a corner, watching, loathing, their world lost to them. A human had dragged them here, away from their own kind. Alone, abandoned, drifting in a world in between.

Example 3

When mayhem erupts at a British boarding school, scholarship pupil Janet discovers the narrow dividing line between magic and science. It’s 1967 and the new head girl Samantha intends to play the system for all its worth, but this backfires [on her]* big time after she invites some delinquent mods to a seance and their gang leader causes an interdimensional rift. With bodysnatching aliens on the rampage, the pupils and teachers develop a hive mentality determined to ensnare Janet into its collective consciousness. Can she entrust herself to the protection of a hippie pixie who claims he’s an expert in repairing dimensions, and will she muster the courage to help him reverse a catastrophe that could destroy humankind?

[* I’m not sure if the words “on her” are necessary]

Example 4

Huddled in a corner, watching, loathing, their world lost to them. A human had dragged them here, away from their own kind. Alone, abandoned, drifting in a world in between.

When mayhem erupts at a British boarding school, scholarship pupil Janet discovers the narrow dividing line between magic and science. It’s 1967 and the new head girl, Samantha, intends to play the system for all its worth, but this backfires big time after she invites some delinquent mods to a seance and their gang leader causes an interdimensional rift.

With bodysnatching aliens on the rampage, the pupils and teachers develop a hive mentality determined to ensnare Janet into its collective consciousness. Can she entrust herself to the protection of a hippie pixie who claims he’s an expert in repairing dimensions, and will she muster the courage to help him reverse a catastrophe that could destroy humankind?

 

Thank you for taking the time to read my post and complete this poll 🙂

March’s Guest Storyteller, Hugh Roberts

Hugh Roberts

Hugh Roberts is a writer and blogger, now living in Abergavenny, South Wales.

Although Hugh suffers from a mild form of dyslexia, he doesn’t allow it to stop him writing. He has a passion for reading and writing short stories, many of which come with an unexpected twist.

Hugh is hoping to publish his first collection of Short Stories towards the end of 2016.

Sarah says: I’m delighted to welcome Hugh Roberts as this month’s guest storyteller. But be warned, his “unexpected twists” often have a wickedly dark edge to them, as you’re about to discover –shades of Roald Dahl, even.

To read more of his tales, plus some  helpful snippets about the art of blogging, you can find him at Hugh’s Views and News.   

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 The Gingerbread House 

Here’s the photo I took of it. Do you like it?

Yes, it took a lot of time making that gingerbread house. Mum was not very pleased about all the mess in the kitchen, but when Johnny volunteered to help me clean everything up and I agreed to make her a cup of tea, she went back to her computer upstairs and said nothing else about it.

The gingerbread house was a huge hit at Mum’s birthday party. Everybody loved it and said how nice it looked as the centrepiece of the table. We even used our favourite sweets to decorate the house. Yes, we ate some of the sweets as we decorated the cake, but there was enough left to finish it off. Mum was well pleased with it and Dad said it was the best birthday cake he had ever seen. He was the one that took the photo.

At Mum’s birthday party, the following day, everyone was eager to have a slice of the gingerbread house, but Dad said we had to eat the sandwiches, cheese and pineapple on sticks, and sausage-rolls first before Mum could cut into it while we all sang happy birthday to her. Mum was quite emotional as she made the first cut and we all thought it was because she hated the fuss of birthdays and being the centre of attention.

Mum had been upset the day before, not only because of the mess we were making but because she said the picture of the gingerbread house we were baking from the recipe book looked like Grandma’s house. Grandma and Mum were very close and when Grandma went to heaven to become an angel, we were all very upset. Johnny and I were so pleased with the gingerbread house and that it reminded Mum of Grandma’s house. Johnny is nearly eight and I’m ten in three and three-quarters months’ time.

After the birthday party had finished we agreed to help Mum and Dad clear up. Dad asked Mum if she wanted to keep the cake board the gingerbread house had stood on, seeing as the whole lot had been eaten. While Dad cleaned the cake board, Mum sat down in her favourite chair and noticed that the lid of Grandma’s canister, that they call an urn, was not on correctly. She asked Dad about it and he said he hadn’t touched it.

It wasn’t until Johnny told Mum and Dad that he’d emptied what was in Grandma’s canister into the mixing bowl, because he wanted to put Grandma back into her house, that the screaming and crying started. Even Dad was upset. I had no idea what Johnny had done while I made Mum that cup of tea and took it up to her. I didn’t even notice a difference in the mixture when I came back and Johnny was making a wish as he stirred everything with the big wooden spoon.

However, it doesn’t matter to Johnny and me because we still believe Grandma is an angel.

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You can find the links to previous guest storyteller posts at 

Friday Fictioneers — Swallowed by a Maze

PHOTO PROMPT - © Sandra Crook

He placed an hour-glass clock adjacent to the maze. His idea of a joke. The hedge appeared not of threatening height from outside — no taller than the average man — so people were happy to take up the challenge.

The owner of the garden would set up his deckchair opposite the clock, pour himself a glass of champagne, and toast participants before they disappeared through an entrance that immediately closed behind them.

On the inside, the hedge reached to the sky and was full of thorns. Not an exit in sight.

Poor souls. Mere skeletons. The maze had a monstrous appetite.

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Friday Fictioneers: 100 word stories
Photo prompt: image (c) Sandra Crook