On Tuesday my half-sister (Nancy) and I headed to Jefferson City. I made the two-hour drive full of excitement. I was going to get my original birth certificate (I'm adopted) and was hoping the document would include my birth father's name.
Well.
There was a banquet hall full of hyped-up adoptees. We were all going to get a piece of paper we had waited decades for.
"There aren't that many," I commented, noting the short stack of manila envelopes. It looked like only 10 or 20, and there were a lot more than 10 or 20 people in the hall.
In the end a lucky 13 got their birth certificate. People who had applied in October, November and December were told, "That's all we have right now."
After a lunch full of griping, Nancy and I went to the office to see if some personal outrage would grease the wheels. They were
How silly of me to expect efficient and timely results from a government office...
on Wednesday I was supposed to go back to work after a two-week break. However, I got a gift from the gods. A water main broke, which meant I got an extra day off.
And now onto book blurb business...
Look at the photo below. That is the cover of your book. You choose the genre. Is it a coffee table book of fashion trends? Is it a photo collection of mentally-ill patients and their clothing choices? You decide.
Write an enticing blurb--150 words or less. (The title doesn't count in the word count.) Blurbs are those enticing bits that prod you into buying the book. Sometimes they're on the back cover of the book. Sometimes they're on the inside front cover. What they always try to do is lure you into purchasing the book.
Lisa Ricard Claro was the original creator of this writing challenge. She moved to Florida, and is too busy to host a weekly book blurb. Her first romance novel (she has three more), Love Built to Last, just came out as an audio book. She's quite busy these days. She even has a brand new book out called The Write Man. If you'd like to read my review of The Write Man, you read it here. It's a great read (and that's saying a lot, since I don't read romance novels).
Include your blurb in a blog post. Include a link to this post. Also, link your post to Mr. Linky. Mr. Linky is easy. If you've never done it, you'll be impressed with how simple he is. And then, check out the other blurb(s). It's interesting to see the different directions writers take, given the same photo.
Here's the book cover, along with my blurb:
Oscar was a chair potato. When he sat in his upholstered throne, he couldn’t keep his mouth shut. His stories (repeated several times a day). His irrelevant comments. His endless requests for another beer… another sandwich… another box of pretzels--well, it drove his wife Violet crazy.
And when he roamed around the house, he left a trail of crumbs, discarded clothes and whisker-shavings in his wake.
Violet was fed up. She deserved an afternoon free from waiting on Oscar, she figured. Then she saw an ad in the paper:
The Roaring Woman Store
Do you yearn for some peace and quiet at home? The Roaring Woman is the place for you. Owner Helen Reddy will help fit your husband with
a chair that will result in serenity now.
Will Oscar love his new chair? Will Violet enjoy the quiet so much that Oscar is never allowed out of his chair? (150 words)
And for those who like to work semi-ahead, here is the photo for the next back-of-the-book blurb:
