I’ve taken my own advice and rewritten one of my book descriptions.
The current description is:
For Dillon Latimer, meeting his long-lost mother comes too late. He’s been a ghost for five years. Still, a little thing like death won’t get in Dillon’s way when he decides his mom’s life needs improving.
Unfortunately, it’s not easy for ghosts to influence the material world, especially when every choice Sylvie makes brings her deeper and deeper into danger.
Sylvie Blair ran away for reasons that seemed right at the time but she’s never let go of the past. When it comes back to haunt her—literally—she’s forced to face her regrets, even as she tries to decide whether to believe her high school sweetheart’s crazy stories about ghosts and drug cartels.
Can Sylvie let go of the past and embrace the future?
And can Dillon keep his mom alive long enough for her to live happily ever after with his dad?
New description:
At seventeen, Sylvie Blair left her infant son with his grandparents while she went shopping. She never came back.
Twenty years later, she’s devastated to learn of his early, untimely death. But although Dillon’s body is long since buried, his spirit lingers on.
And he’s not real happy.
He doesn’t like his mom’s job—too dangerous. He doesn’t like her apartment—too boring. And he definitely doesn’t like her love life—non-existent.
But when Dillon decides that his parents should be living happily ever after, he sets them on a path that leads deeper and deeper into danger.
Can Sylvie let go of the past and embrace the future?
And can Dillon survive the deadly energy he unwittingly unleashes?
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Any feedback? Typos? Confusing sentences (beyond the natural confusion)? Opinions or revision suggestions?
Thanks for any help!
I read this yesterday and my instinctive response was: keep the original. Something about it hooked me more quickly than the second one did.
But today, I’ve re-read it and I actually like both for different reasons. The first one still hooks me more emotionally than the second one. The first two sentences of each one are what I focused on this morning. “He’s been a ghost for five years.” was a real kicker…especially compared with “She never came back.”
I guess being a ghost sounds more exciting than someone leaving.
But there is another difference between the two. The first one really comes across as being Dillon’s story to tell. The second version sounds like this is Sylvie’s story to tell.
I loved the final line of the second version though. It gave me a little more insight into the chain of events in the story having a supernatural theme to it as well as typical human stuff.
Hope that helps. Maybe a blend of the two????
I think what has always bothered me about the first is that it’s really cluttered. It tries to get every idea in there and blurbs don’t need to do that. A blurb should entice, not reveal. Number two does that better for me, though. As for whether it’s Sylvie’s or Dillon’s story — well, I never really answered that question and neither could any of my readers!
That said, I bet “she never went back” would be a stronger line than “she never came back”. Pretty sure I’ll be making that change.
You might like the themes you brought out in the new blurb, but there is a sense of emotion that is lacking in the second one. The first one has the emotional hook. So get that emotion into the second one and you’ll have a winner.
Here’s a spot to illustrate my point…in the second blurb it starts with….
“At seventeen, Sylvie Blair left her infant son with his grandparents while she went shopping. She never went back.”
And then segues immediately to…
“Twenty years later, she’s devastated to learn of his early, untimely death.”
That just sounds so cold-hearted for a heroine. She’s young, she leaves, and then suddenly thinks about him twenty years later? Discovering that he died young? But in the first blurb you have this line that grounds the reader better into her motivations…
“Sylvie Blair ran away for reasons that seemed right at the time but she’s never let go of the past.”
Ah, okay. So she didn’t just abandon her child. She reasoned that she left him in a better place. I really believe that this emotion needs to be added back in to the new blurb. Because it lets me know that it was a hard decision to make and I want to read and find out what happened to her to make such a huge decision.