The Blurb for Faerie Rising: The First Book of Binding

[Finchbearer]

This, in a nutshell. Winter's spirit animal. Also, the stimulants she's dosing herself with are serious business. And how magic and medicine work together is fairly simple and really not much of a stretch: they support and enhance each other. Think of how many skills you bring to the fore when you write. When I do it, it's History, Literary Criticism, Poetry, Research and Critical Thinking Skills, etc. I just channel grad school and we have it.

Sorry, it’s not that I disbelieve your collective ability to convey all of this successfully within the book itself, it was more that the way the information is conveyed in the blurb that I don’t know whether it would benefit from being separated a little bit, so you get a sense that Winter is in fact very good (or very bad) at multi-tasking.

In the book how is she referred to? A wizard trauma surgeon? Or a wizard and trauma surgeon? Or does she only refer to herself as a wizard?

 

[Prince of Spires]

4. Winter is approached by a pair of sidhe lords on an old Harley bearing claim that she is harboring a powerful fugitive from the realms of Faerie who holds a crown prince prisoner, and that they need her help to rescue the boy. (this is alot, four new characters and a motorcycle, and i think the sidh lords both accusing her of harboring and asking for her help is a bit convoluted. Consider nixing the Harley to simplify the content and breaking this down to a simpler idea: maybe "after the arrival of a mysterious fugitive from the land of faerie, winter is approached... who need her help rescuing a crown prince" or something along those lines, as a reader this would make me suspect the two are related without spelling it out and pique my interest)

I would keep the reference to the sidhe lords in there. Why? Because it's a very strong pointer for (sub) genre. This novel falls right in the middle of the supernatural urban fantasy genre with different blends of fae running around (without the humans noticing). And the sidhe term is a very strong signal to that. Simply having the term in there will be a sell to some readers (and those readers will be exactly the right readers for this novel).

It's also a search engine optimization thing (and Amazon is just a big search engine for books). Words in the blurb are a high ranking thing, and people who like this type of fantasy are likely to search for sidhe (I can imagine at least, I haven't researched it).

 

[Finchbearer]

I pointed out the niche aspect of the term ‘sidhe’ too, and perhaps you’re right PoS when saying it’s a good term to include precisely because it’s niche, but also from a marketing point of view, niche isn’t always what is going to increase sales. When narrowing down a niche, it’s depends on the popularity of it.

Conversely it could be that using specific terminology does help to sell something like a niche sub-genre of fantasy, but I’d think that scenario less likely if when looking at the fact that urban fantasy is growing all the time, especially when you look at big players such as Sarah J Maas and her Crescent City series.

 

[Devor]

Winter Mulcahy is a wizard and a trauma surgeon with a hidden clinic in the heart of Seahaven, Washington. Where once there were dozens of Mulcahy wizards, she keeps the city together against threats old and emergent by only the skin of her teeth, the blood of her friends, and an addiction to stimulants that is slowly killing her. Holding this fragile line, she is the last wizard standing between the escalating violence in the preternatural population and total chaos. Winter is approached by a pair of sidhe lords on an old Harley bearing claim that she is harboring a powerful fugitive from the realms of Faerie who holds a crown prince prisoner, and that they need her help to rescue the boy.

To maintain the city’s precarious balance of power, Winter must get to the truth of the kidnapping and this mysterious fugitive while also successfully navigating the deadly and deceptive waters of immortal politics before all of Seahaven falls to factional fighting and flames.

With such a short amount of space, you should try to make better use of your verbs. Many of these are particularly weak. I would also want to open with more powerful language. Try opening with a line more like this one:

With the skin of her teeth, the blood of her friends, and a deadly addiction to mystical stimulants, wizard and trauma surgeon Winter Mulcahy struggles to safeguard the city of Seahaven, Washington against old and emergent threats.

I underlined skin of her teeth, as well as old and emergent threats, because I think you can do better with something more specific. I underlined mystical because I don't know if the stimulants are mystical, I took a guess, so if I'm wrong you can use chemical instead.

Your book is on my reading list for later this year.

 

[A. E. Lowan]

Sorry, it’s not that I disbelieve your collective ability to convey all of this successfully within the book itself, it was more that the way the information is conveyed in the blurb that I don’t know whether it would benefit from being separated a little bit, so you get a sense that Winter is in fact very good (or very bad) at multi-tasking.

In the book how is she referred to? A wizard trauma surgeon? Or a wizard and trauma surgeon? Or does she only refer to herself as a wizard?

Now you see why I need help.

In the book, Winter tends to refer to herself as a wizard as well as a physician or a surgeon. She's got a couple of other hats as well, but those are the two big ones. There is a good reason why I don't refer to her competence in the blurb, and it's because blurbs, for the most part as we all know nothing in writing is set in stone except for the pesky writing thing, need to be short and they need to be exciting, and they need to get the reader asking those questions.

What they aren't is a CV, which can slow stuff down in such a small space and make the details seem improbable without context. And that is so very hard to keep in mind because you want to put all of the nifty stuff in there so readers get as excited as you are about the story. My MIL is a perfect example of this (and I can tell you all about it because this is one of the few spaces she can't find me in >.<). We took her to a con with us a few years back because I was going through the whole health thing and Jenny needed a booth buddy and our writing partner couldn't come. Every single time Jenny started talking to potential readers about the series, chiming in from beside her would come, "Tell them about the good stuff!" And then she'd start telling all about it. We're not sure how she managed to avoid learning about spoilers, but she did and here we are.

We still did well that weekend, but only because of a massive coordinated push both at the con and online with me as the Woman in the Chair. But no, we're not taking her with us again.

You have nothing to apologize for. I don't think you doubted me. I think I can get really wordy and complicated, and that can use a wee grooming. Rather like my geriatric Japanese Chins. You are giving me excellent thinks and I am both listening and taking notes on everything. I may not make these exact changes in this blurb, but I can see homes for your ideas in other blurbs and I really appreciate your time and effort. I know how much it can take to work up a good brain sweat when none of us really have the energy to and doing it on my behalf is wonderfully generous. Thank you.

 

[A. E. Lowan]

With such a short amount of space, you should try to make better use of your verbs. Many of these are particularly weak. I would also want to open with more powerful language. Try opening with a line more like this one:

With the skin of her teeth, the blood of her friends, and a deadly addiction to mystical stimulants, wizard and trauma surgeon Winter Mulcahy struggles to safeguard the city of Seahaven, Washington against old and emergent threats.

I underlined skin of her teeth, as well as old and emergent threats, because I think you can do better with something more specific. I underlined mystical because I don't know if the stimulants are mystical, I took a guess, so if I'm wrong you can use chemical instead.

Your book is on my reading list for later this year.

"Skin of her teeth," has always bugged me a bit as being very cliche, but it's also so cliche that my brain clicks on it, says, "Oh yeah, hey..." and I'm on to the next thing. Thanks for pointing it out somewhere where I can pull it out and pick.

And yeah, I've got a bad habit, especially with older writings, of telling the writers I mentor to get into the readers' face with their verbs, to find the best way. And then I write and all the verbs go limp like they have the vapors. I finally did get a couple of books that will hopefully help me, so we'll see what Book 4 does on the rewrite.

And I am so squee about you reading Faerie Rising! *does happy chair dance* I can't wait!

 

[A. E. Lowan]

I pointed out the niche aspect of the term ‘sidhe’ too, and perhaps you’re right PoS when saying it’s a good term to include precisely because it’s niche, but also from a marketing point of view, niche isn’t always what is going to increase sales. When narrowing down a niche, it’s depends on the popularity of it.

Conversely it could be that using specific terminology does help to sell something like a niche sub-genre of fantasy, but I’d think that scenario less likely if when looking at the fact that urban fantasy is growing all the time, especially when you look at big players such as Sarah J Maas and her Crescent City series.

Sorry, I hit "PoS" and have spent the past five minutes giggling. Typos are an endless source of entertainment. May they never die.

Excellent point about words like "sidhe" and the increasing jargoning of genre fiction in general, but also Speculative Fiction as a whole. We like our fantasy words and our fantasy worlds, both as writers and as readers but there is a limit. We haven't found it, yet, and maybe we should have, but aside from, "Holy fantasy names, Batman!" and any word with more than one apostrophe, it looks like everything is still on the table.

We might want to fix that. Team Lowan tries. No fancy names for spells or magic types. If Winter doses out a healing potion, it's a healing potion. I'm lazy, I love conlang but so far haven't had a need for it and so no conlang even with several languages being spoken at any given time in the story. We've got two more series in development. That could change.

 

[pmmg]

Took me like ten minutes to figure out what PoS was even referring to.

Not knowing what a Sidhe was, when I read that term, I thought it was something hellish, and perhaps a term like a dread lord, or a sith lord. I did not think them a type of faerie.

 

[Jackarandajam]

Took me like ten minutes to figure out what PoS was even referring to.

Not knowing what a Sidhe was, when I read that term, I thought it was something hellish, and perhaps a term like a dread lord, or a sith lord. I did not think them a type of faerie.

Yeah I just realized I've been reading sidhe and thinking Sikh this entire time.

 

[A. E. Lowan]

Yeah I just realized I've been reading sidhe and thinking Sikh this entire time.

Whoops! lol We do have whole thing about how to pronounce and what it means, but the truth is the Irish are a dangerous, hell-spawned race of lunatics with an axe to grind against the English, and I am the child of my people. Have fun pronouncing half the book.

No, but seriously, all of the books have pronunciation guides for both names and things. Here's the pronunciation section. Before anyone wants to poke at me, the joke is funny.

~~~

The woman looked confused for a moment, her gaze moving from Etienne to Cian and back again. The girl looked to her employer and whispered, “That was so cool! What was it?”

The woman’s eyes widened with understanding and she shook her head. “I’m sorry. I never learned Faerie Gaelic. Do you speak English?” She spoke slowly to make her English words easily understood, her voice low and melodic. Etienne liked it.

“Oh, he speaks English just fine,” Jessie interjected.

The woman turned to the girl with a raised eyebrow and the girl flushed. She then turned back to face Etienne. “I’m sorry about that.”

Etienne gave his head a little shake. “Please, I’m the one who should apologize for assuming. You just look so much like one of our kind.”

The woman gave a small smile. It did not reach her eyes. What was making her so sad? “I do, I suppose. I favor my mother. She was a sidhe mix.”

“A what?” Jessie cut in. “I thought you said she was fae.”

The woman turned to the girl, glanced back at Etienne and Cian, and then replied, “She was, like they are. The sidhe are greater fae, though from what I’ve been told they don’t like to admit it. They consider themselves above all other fae.” She gave Etienne and Cian an apologetic look.

Etienne waved it off. “Don’t worry about me. I think they could use being taken down a peg or two.” He just wanted her to keep talking. Lovely voice. But—he glanced at Cian, who continued to look a little concerned—was she sick? Her hand still trembled on the cup.

Jessie looked Etienne up and down. “I still don’t get it. She’s a she? So… she’s a woman, right?” Jessie looked back to her boss. “Dude, it’s the twenty-first century. If she wants to use female pronouns, that’s her right.”

Etienne blinked. Was the girl talking about him?

The woman’s blue eyes widened in annoyance and she shook her head and reached for a pen and paper, murmuring, “I could have sworn you’d have picked this up from somewhere by now.” She began writing, and in a louder voice said, “Using your proper pronouns is fine, but that’s not what we mean. Not ‘she’ like this. ‘Sidhe’ like this, Irish Gaelic for the Shining Ones, the Fair Folk.”

Etienne frowned as understanding dawned. “I’m a faerie knight. A male one.” English was a stupid language.

 

[Jackarandajam]

Whoops! lol We do have whole thing about how to pronounce and what it means, but the truth is the Irish are a dangerous, hell-spawned race of lunatics with an axe to grind against the English, and I am the child of my people. Have fun pronouncing half the book.

So if sidhe is something that has meaning specifically to your readers...
Often times with a series, the back blurb has the "insider" part at the beginning, as sort of a (I always thought) respect thing to the readers who are familiar with their world, followed by a brief introduction to the main character for anyone new who happens to pick up book-not-one first.
So an idea would be to maybe frontload the paragraph about the sidh lords on the Harley for those already in the know, and then follow with the more book-neutral, overarching description of the character and world?

EDIT: SORRY I just realized this is book one you're talking about. If that's the case the formula might still work; giving a little glimpse in world first and then being more general after... but I'd suggest keeping the series specific wording minimal for the book one blurb.

 

[Finchbearer]

Took me like ten minutes to figure out what PoS was even referring to.

Not knowing what a Sidhe was, when I read that term, I thought it was something hellish, and perhaps a term like a dread lord, or a sith lord. I did not think them a type of faerie.

Faerie are dark and dangerous types these days! Or always have been just fantasy fiction has kind of caught up now.

 

[A. E. Lowan]

Faerie are dark and dangerous types these days! Or always have been just fantasy fiction has kind of caught up now.

Fantasy's just catching up. There are reasons the Irish don't disturb the Fair Folk. And we do use the term "Dread lord" at a few points, and it's a well-deserved title. A protagonist, of course, at least so far because it's the Books of Binding.

 

[skip.knox]

Sidhe is an excellent example of how tricky this writing business can be. I remember when I first encountered the word in a novel. As I did with many other words new to me, I just kept reading. Sidhe hung there, unpronounced and not understood, save that it seemed to be a person or group.

Some years later, I learned what the word meant, as defined by someone (before Google). But then still later, I came to appreciate that "fae" or "elf" conjured up different images for different people, so that if I wanted *my* elf to give a particular impression, I was going to have to make sure that was in the text. I couldn't just assume.

Fantasy may be catching up, but there is a dismaying variety in the finishing lines, and the scholars and the purists are scarcely more than a faction.

 

[Prince of Spires]

She began writing, and in a louder voice said, “Using your proper pronouns is fine, but that’s not what we mean. Not ‘she’ like this. ‘Sidhe’ like this, Irish Gaelic for the Shining Ones, the Fair Folk.”

I read the book, including this part, but in my mind I still pronounce it Sid-hè. Which just shows that you can hit your readers over the head with how it's supposed to be pronounced, but some are just very slow to catch on... I've just accepted that I've learned some words simply by reading, which means my pronounciation is probably way off. As long as I sort of get the meaning it's fine for me.

Before reading the blurb when I picked up the book, I'd never heard of a Sidhe. When I read the blurb, my mind simply filled in "some kind of supernatural being, will probably become clear in the story" and moved on from there. It didn't stop me from buying the book, and even not knowing what it was, it did explain genre to me.

Though I might have come to the blurb knowing it was urban fantasy with lots of different races. So I might not be the best example to use in terms of understanding.

 

[A. E. Lowan]

I read the book, including this part, but in my mind I still pronounce it Sid-hè. Which just shows that you can hit your readers over the head with how it's supposed to be pronounced, but some are just very slow to catch on... I've just accepted that I've learned some words simply by reading, which means my pronounciation is probably way off. As long as I sort of get the meaning it's fine for me.

Before reading the blurb when I picked up the book, I'd never heard of a Sidhe. When I read the blurb, my mind simply filled in "some kind of supernatural being, will probably become clear in the story" and moved on from there. It didn't stop me from buying the book, and even not knowing what it was, it did explain genre to me.

Though I might have come to the blurb knowing it was urban fantasy with lots of different races. So I might not be the best example to use in terms of understanding.

My wife still pronounces a Mercedes Lackey character's name as "Tylenol." She knows the actual name and she can pronounce it just fine, but her brain snaps right back to over the counter pain medication. She's dyslexic, so maybe that's part of it, but people will also see what they believe.

Yeah, I think I may throw the sidhe thing out to a group with a broader sample base. I can see some of us even here are struggling, and that's no good.

 

[Prince of Spires]

At some point, A/B testing the blurbs might be your best option. I've got a writer friend who did this with her blurbs. She created 2 identical Facebook ads with only the blurb being different, ran them for a limited nr of clicks (or views), and used Amazon attribution links to track the results. Of course, being half decent with FB ads is probably a requirement to make this work.

In the end, the proof is in the pudding, and we can give our opinions, but only actual buyers will show you what works and what doesn't.

 

[A. E. Lowan]

At some point, A/B testing the blurbs might be your best option. I've got a writer friend who did this with her blurbs. She created 2 identical Facebook ads with only the blurb being different, ran them for a limited nr of clicks (or views), and used Amazon attribution links to track the results. Of course, being half decent with FB ads is probably a requirement to make this work.

In the end, the proof is in the pudding, and we can give our opinions, but only actual buyers will show you what works and what doesn't.

That is a really fantastic idea. I love it!