The mystery of writing blurbs…what an odd word

I bet Kim Kardashian does not write her own blurbs. However, David Mamet probably does. Good for him. Good for her.

I find writing blurbs to be harder than writing regular story prose. I’m not sure why. Is it because blurbs represent a sort of anti-buffet mindset, and buffets and all-you-can-eat salad bars are what we Americans desperately want to plunge our faces into, every day and every mealtime? Okay, that was a stretch.

Blurb is such an odd word. If it was a food, it would be something akin to tofu. Maybe a smear of tofu on the kitchen table. Garnished with watercress.

I need to come up with a compelling and hypnotic blurb for The Fury Clock. So far, I’ve got nothing. Cue the crickets. Reading other people’s blurbs is instructive. It looks like everyone has the same problem. One mildly interesting observation is that the majority of blurbs within any given genre tend to sound the same.

Here’s a blurb I’ve randomly selected. I’ve removed some of the key nouns and verbs. You could plug in any number of other nouns and verbs and make it work for any number of other books. Hmm. But not The Fury Clock.

__________ is trained in ___________, but when her/his life is threatened, she/he must join forces with ______ from _______ to stop the ________ .

Jetser Harkness is trained in beer brewing, but when his life is threatened, he must join forces with Zippy the Dwarf from Bulgaria to stop hordes of dangerous French-accented vintners.

Of course, you can innovate somewhat on this formulaic approach.

Sloan Windemere is impossibly gorgeous, particularly with her taut abs, and is a kung-fu expert, but when her perfectly coiffed hair is threatened, she must join forces with cool, calculated Frasier Crockett IV and plunge into the Manhattan underworld of blasé models and squash-playing trust funders to stop the forces of smelly tourists from Nebraska. Will she succeed in her desperate quest for the perfect pose? How many chapters will she last before she surrenders her non-virginal body to the equally non-virginal (and divinely muscled) body of Frasier IV?

That sounds like a book I’d pay to not read. Okay, back to The Fury Clock.