You Give Them An Encyclopedia, They Ask For A Tweet

My poor beleaguered editor emerged from hiding to say that while she thought it was extraordinary of me to write a twelve page synopsis, full of the most intricate detailing (I could be paraphrasing here), for The Shade Of The Moon, what she really wanted was just a sentence or two. How, she asked, did I describe the book to my friends?

Well, the truth of the matter is, I haven't described it to my friends (present company excepted). Yesterday, it's true, I did talk to a friend, but I described The Offering instead, at twelve page length, full of intricate detailing. And when I've described it to you (present company included), I've described it as Peyton Place The Next Generation, which isn't exactly how I'd like to present The Shade Of The Moon to people who're going to decide if they want to publish it or not.

Not that Peyton Place The Next Generation wasn't fabulous. It was. I can still quote dialogue from it.

"Oh, Betty."

A classic.

Actually, speaking of dialogue, what I immediately thought of when my editor requested twelve pages be boiled down to two sentences was the beginning scene in Sullivan's Travels , which is probably the best beginning scene in the history of everything.

Sullivan: I want this picture to be a document. I want to hold a mirror up to life. I want this to be a picture of dignity - a true canvas of the suffering of humanity.
Lebrand: But with a little sex.
Sullivan: With a little sex in it.

So here is the two sentence version of The Shade Of The Moon. Feel free to put a little sex in it!

Seventeen years after the end of This World We Live In, teenagers related by love and by blood to the families in Life As We Knew It and The Dead And The Gone struggle to find their place in a society that is welcoming to some and forbidding to others.

Sixteen year old Juliet reveals in her diary her feelings of love, jealousy, and yearning, until a shattering truth changes her destiny and that of everyone she loves.