Count Down to Publication IV

What is a blurb?

First, look at the word. It's about as attractive on the page as the word "blog".

Blurb.

You want to say, "excuse me," as soon as you see it hanging out there.

Blurb.

Excuse me. Which is really the true definition of a blurb. You, as a writer, are saying, "excuse me" to other writers (of high reputation and visibility) and asking them to read and hopefully comment on your book.

The first blurb for Blackbird came from the amazing and generous Hope Edelman. This comment really mattered to me because I adore and admire Hope. Her work in Motherless Daughters changed my life. The second blurb came from Frank McCourt and was courtesy of my then agent Molly Freidrich, who also represented McCourt and strong-armed him into making a comment (although I am sure she would deny this).

And this is actually a very important distinction. What is important to a writer is hardly important to a publisher (or an agent). Marketing isn't about who or what I like. Marketing is about visibility and while Hope Edelman was certainly high profile (and in my view, a more important writer), she wasn't Frank McCourt and thus, McCourt's blurb went on the front cover of Blackbird.

When you are working with Simon & Schuster, they have a lot of pull when it comes to blurbs. When you are working with a boutique press like Seal, well, you might have to do this work yourself. And in the case of Found, I did have to go out and stump for my own blurbs.

I made a list, checked it twice and went to work. Hope Edelman, Cheryl Strayed (author of Torch and soon to be released Wild, Karen Karbo (a local prima author), Adam Pertman (head of the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute), Dr. Nancy Verrier (Primal Wound and B.J. Lifton (grand dame of adoption advocacy and healing reform).

I also had a hold out secret hope that Meredith Hall, author of Without a Map would blurb me. Hall's book so influenced me, I would stare at the wall for hours in the middle of the night. Her prose was stunning. Her heart ache complete. I was flayed by that book.

Everyone in my original list came back with a YES. Yes is a lovely and memorable word. With each "yes" I cheered in my quiet little office and did a little victory dance. Who doesn't love "YES." Even Meredith Hall had initially said yes, until she got the book and then came back with a decisive "NO."

This was, of course, devastating personally because I so adored her writing. Hall was my personal Pièce de résistance, my pearl. I immediately wanted to demand "WHY? WHY? WHY??"

Had I offened her in some way with the writing?
Did she hate it?
Was it just horribly written?

Talk about being triggered. (In case you don't know, Hall is a birthmother and of course, I am an adoptee). I was racked with doubt because Hall didn't reject it before I sent it to her and then she had it, in her hands and presto-chango. What had I done?

Writers!

My agent said to forget it, Hall wasn't a coup and to move on.

Agents!

The marketing mentality and the creator mentality are so different. A stunning abyss exists between the two. Still, I did what my agent suggested, set my insecurity aside and savored the other blurbs as they came in:

"I just finished Found, and I'm speechless. The child from Blackbird has grown up into an enormously wise, insightful, and honest woman. But that's all I'm saying. You'll want to discover the rest for yourself."

-- Hope Edelman, The Possibility of Everything

[image error] Jennifer Lauck's memoir FOUND is a powerful story about the most primal love and loss. In prose that is as clear-eyed as it is beautiful, riveting as it is wise, Lauck shattered my heart and then put it back together again. I'll never forget this book.

--Cheryl Strayed, Torch & Wild (to be released Fall 2011).

There are many ways of losing and being lost, and many ways of finding and being found when you are an adoptee. Jennifer Lauck has experienced most of them. We share her heroic and spiritual journey as a displaced child who has lost both her birth and adoptive mothers and suffers from a series of abusive would- be-mothers but finds herself on becoming a mother, being mothered by a meditation teacher, and forgiving those who failed her, including her birth mother, who cannot be the mother she needs. A compelling and uplifting memoir.

--Betty Jean Lifton, Lost and Found: The Adoption Experience


[image error] "In Found, Jennifer Lauck provides an articulate voice for the questions and complexities that so often come up for adoptees, but too often are left unspoken. Other adopted people -- and their families -- would do well to listen."

-- Adam Pertman, Executive Dir. Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute & Author of Adoption Nation

Jennifer Lauck is a writer who happens to be adopted, rather than an adoptee who writes her story.
This means that this book reads like a novel and is a story that will resonate with anyone who has felt loss...loss of
family, loss of self, loss of hope. The lesson here is resilience, keeping the hope alive and knowing that no matter how desperate things are, they will get better. Finding oneself is the key. Jennifer is unlocking all those doors to her Self.

--Nancy Verrier, The Primal Wound & Coming Home to Self

Karen Karbo is still working on her blurb, we're exchanging emails and I have to say I tried to get comments from Ann Fessler (author of The Girls Who Went Away) but Ann wasn't biting. She never even answered my email. Oh well!

We have our blurbs and I feel blessed. Particularly blessed by the inclusion of B.J. Lifton who died just after submitting her blurb, of pneumonia. What are the chances of that? How lucky was I to reach her and receive such caring words of praise? That is me, luck with an A. Lauck.

I feel like blurbs are a bit of magic, fate and The Rolling Stones: You can't always get what you want but if you try sometimes, you just might find, you get what you need.