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Requesting help and feedback for my blurb
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Just to give you a tip that was helpful to me. Look at blurbs from both traditionally published and self-published novels in your genre and observe how other books were done. After you have an idea of the different styles of blurbs, you can piece together your own. You don’t have to write one in the exact same style as another author, but it’s good to know what professional blurbs look like. Hope this helps.
Mod
It's completely acceptable. We have a blurb workshop. I've moved your post over to it, in case you'd like to post it here.
Leah wrote: "Just to give you a tip that was helpful to me. Look at blurbs from both traditionally published and self-published novels in your genre and observe how other books were done. After you have an idea..."Yes, I did that!
The romance genre has a lot of different styles, most I don't like. But I have been reading so many of them last night, my brain is fried.
A really helpful tip. Thank You!
Since the mod gave me a heads up, I will just post my blurb here:Pain again. A sting. Something sharp was being inserted into my forearm…
Vampires.
They appeared out of nowhere, catapulting the world into complete disarray.
Faster, stronger, and possessing supernatural abilities, humanity never stood a chance.
But it wasn’t over yet.
Cassandra was a member of an elite group of vampire hunters. The final line in humanity’s defences. Determined to achieve her dream of a vampire-free world, Cassandra slaughtered one vampire after another. It was an endless, depressing cycle, and as the days went by, parts of her disappeared along with it.
The breaking point started when she had to pull the trigger on one of her teammates. It was mercy, or so she kept telling herself. The sister she loved was already dead. What’s left was a vampire, a heartless monster.
Cassandra lost everything once, and now it was happening — again.
Distraught from their loss, there was only one option.
Find the vampire who turned her.
Kill him.
But it wasn’t as simple as Cassandra had thought. She was stuck in a relationship she never asked for, and after a heated argument with her best friend, she lost him too. The team was falling apart.
Things couldn’t get any worse.
Until she got bitten.
A dark romance.
I'm not familiar with paranormal romance, so that's a consideration to keep in mind :) and it would be good to have thoughts from a paranormal romance writer/reader.OK. There is a lot here and the brief, one-sentence paragraphs might work better if there were not so many of them. A few may heighten the urgency/tension, but a bunch of them ended up reducing tension.
The romance angle doesn't emerge. It's only mentioned at the end. Also, the beginning about the 'sting' in the arm made me think she was already a vampire, but again that's mentioned at the end. I have no idea what was inserted into her arm or why.
Since the team is fragmenting I think the main idea is:
Once there was a team of elite vampire hunters, until they discovered the real enemy was within themselves.
Cassandra dreamed of a vampire-free world. . . .
Switched to first person. Updated blurb:
Killing vampires was my full time job.
And I hated it.
Hunters never even existed two and a half years ago. And then they came, catapulting the world into complete disarray.
Humanity was losing. My hope for a vampire-free world was slipping away day by day.
Yet we never gave up.
Not even when we were forced to kill Laura, our teammate, the only person I thought of as my sister.
Revenge was the only option. So, we hunted the vampire that turned her into a monster.
We killed him, yet it was not enough. They were still thousands, and they never stopped coming.
Things couldn’t get any worse.
Until I was bitten by a vampire who never wanted to.
A vampire that I knew all too well.
A dark romance.
Mod
I'm getting no sense of romance here. It sounds more fantasy / adventure.
Also, that last sentence seems to be third person, though the rest of the blurb is in first person. I'd lose it. It adds nothing to the blurb.
If you could vary the lengths of the sentences a bit more, and gather them into full paragraphs, you might have something.
I liked the first one more. And I do like a lot of it. You might try stopping soon after 'kill him' because it starts to loop around again. Just a suggestion because I think it just could do with a little tightening up; not a whole lot:
Pain again. A sting. Something sharp was being inserted into my forearm…
Vampires.
They appeared out of nowhere, catapulting the world into complete disarray. Faster, stronger, and possessing supernatural abilities, humanity never stood a chance. But it wasn’t over yet.
Cassandra was a member of an elite group of vampire hunters. The final line in humanity’s defenses. Determined to achieve her dream of a vampire-free world, Cassandra slaughtered one vampire after another. It was an endless, depressing cycle, and as the days went by, parts of her disappeared along with it.
The breaking point started when she had to pull the trigger on one of her teammates. It was mercy, or so she kept telling herself. The sister she loved was already dead. What’s left was a vampire, a heartless monster.
Cassandra lost everything once, and now it was happening — again. Distraught from her loss, she has only one option. Find the vampire who turned her -- and kill him. No matter how much she loves him.
I like M. L.’s take. We don’t want to become redundant. Short and precise is the best way, in my opinion. Make sure to remove all repeated descriptions and smooth the transitions.
It doesnt seem like a romance at all the way the blurb started seemed like it was just adventure alone. blurb is disjointed and incoherent.
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So I just finished my first novel, yay! But, now the problem is the blurb. I am clueless about it, so I need different opinions and viewpoints.
Some info about my book.
Book Title: Bitten
Book genre: paranormal romance.
If you're interested in helping me and like vampire novels, please do pm me! I will show the blurb since I am not sure if posting here like this is good manners or not!
Apologies and thanks in advance!