I like to think that I’m growing and learning as a writer (and despite a string of university qualifications, I’m starting to wonder if I’m a slow learner. Perhaps a topic for another post). As I learn, I hope I’m getting better a writing blurbs. Blurbs are a whole other language (did I mention somewhere that I struggle with learning languages?).
Stories seem to fall out of me, yet blurbs are more like that old story about pulling teeth.
It strikes me that a blurb, as in sales copy, must describe the book, but not reveal the book. They must be punchy. Rather than saying, ‘well, you might enjoy this book’, they should say, in effect, ‘READ THIS NOW! Your life depends on it!’ I’ve been looking back over some of my blurbs and starting to get a sense of how they miss that. By a wide mark. Sometimes wide means something like the gulf between galaxies.
My recent book Raven Rising started out with this goofy blurb:
“Practically swallowed up by alien forest, the wreck of the Raven offers few clues to the team eager to discover why the ship wrecked so violently. Crack investigator Angelie Gunnarson faces an enormous task. Will she be able to find the answers before time runs out? An action-packed short sci-fi novel from the award-winning
author of The City Builders.”
I think this blurb has some good moments (the last sentence kind of works), but frankly overall it’s pedestrian. Where’s the good reason why a reader might be interested in the book?
All right then, I’ve had a go at another iteration:
“Light years from home, Starship Raven went down in an plunging blazing wreck. Crack investigator Angelie Gunnarson and her team love this kind of impossible mystery. But the Raven might have more secrets than even Angelie can handle. An action-packed short sci-fi novel from the award-winning author of The City Builders.”
Hmm. Not quite sure yet. Don’t quite know what the next iteration will be.
I am, however, going to take a course in Writing Sales Copy, to see if I can’t get a better handle on this.
Then of course there’s work to do on the covers… and all the time work to do on the craft of writing too…
All this is pretty fun.
I’ve published my shortest novel to date. Is that something to brag about? Not sure. I do like Dean Wesley Smith’s philosophy that a story is the length the story needs to be, rather than pushing to hit some arbitrary wordcount. I think I hear that a hundred thousand words is where a novel should aim.
Asimov’s Science Fiction hold reader polls each year – where readers get the chance to vote for their favorite story from the past year’s issues.
I probably wax on about my teenage dream of getting published in 
I’m fortunate enough to have have my short story “Crimson Birds of Small Miracles” on the finalist ballot for New Zealand’s Sir Julius Vogel Awards. I’m honored, and thrilled to be standing with such good company.
I have a story the new New Zealand speculative fiction anthology Te Kōrero Ahi Kā – To Speak of the Home Fires Burning. Edited by 
Since 2007, Baen Books and The National Space Society have sponsored The Jim Baen Memorial Short Story Award, to honor the legacy of Jim Baen and to promote the ideals of forward-thinking, positive science fiction.
As a side note, my third placed story, from 2013, “Improvising at Branson Six” is available as a standalone ebook. Available from Amazon and 
Triple V Publishing 