Blurb help needed

[Pamela]

Detours in Time, by Pamela Schloesser Canepa

A feisty young woman and an awkward Science professor take a friendly trip together to the future. What was supposed to be fun soon turns quite intense when the pair discover things they shouldn’t know about their future selves and get sidetracked on the timeline. Can the two friends of two completely different mindsets agree on a course of action? How is it possible to witness and not participate, in a place and time where you are essentially a stranger?

T.S.Eliot’s J. Alfred Prufrock asked the fitting question: “Do I dare disturb the universe?”

Detours in Time explores two unlikely friends and their tenuous relationship amid the backdrop of a future that reveals great wonders and horrors, things that a traveler from 1997 would never imagine. The temptation to use discoveries from future technology to aid them in their present time is great. Detours in Time starts as a fantastic escape and grows to present many moral dilemmas, surprises, and future solutions that are not quite solutions.

[Keith]

You don't name the two protagonists. Also, it reads more like a query than a blurb. The way you word the first paragraph sounds like a romance, yet the final paragraph doesn't seem to agree.

I don't think you've told us much about the story. Generally you want to introduce the main character(s), outline their goals, then describe their stakes for failure. I don't feel I learned anything about those three things reading what you have.

And "future solutions that are not quite solutions" seems to have zero information content.

[Pamela]

Thanks for your feedback. I am horrible at this. So, I am reading that I should be more specific. It also is a romance in the sense that it starts as friendship and grows into romance by the end of the book. I wasn't sure how much of that to give away. This is my very rough sketch of a blurb, and it obviously needs help. The genre is a strange one, I suppose. Sci-fi romance, but it's not some "I was abducted by an alien to be his love slave" story. Not to knock that.

Thanks for your help. All feedback is welcome. Is it more like a query because it is not very specific?

[Keith]

I mention more query than blurb because you talk about the story rather than tell us about the characters and their adventures.

I've suggested several times to produce a bullet list of the 4-6 things about your story that make it different from every other story out there. Then expand each bullet entry by 2-3 sentences and polish to perfection. There is no point in telling the reader stuff they can already guess from the location on the bookshelf (e.g., scifi). Once you mention 'time travel,' you set up all sorts of expectations (that you probably should be sure to meet, or wind up with upset readers leaving bad reviews). Scifi and time travel provide all sorts of background you don't need to cover in the blurb. Indeed, with your title you have already prescreened a lot of potential readers (I learned the hard way that screening _out_ people who won't like the story is equally as important as enticing those who will like it).

I suggest something like this:


Jill and Bob, feisty young woman and awkward professor, respectively, go on a series of trips into the future.

The future, though, informs them of things better to have never known. They must learn to witness and not participate, in a place and time where they're complete strangers.

As their reluctant friendship teeters on more, they must resist the urge to use discoveries from future technology to aid them in their present time.


Pretty lame, I'm sure, but perhaps you can use it as inspiration.

[Pamela]

Thanks again! I'll savor the ideas and work on it for a few days.

[Alex]

First, things "turn quite intense." What is this ambiguous turn of phrase standing in for? A fleet of government agents are hunting us down with tanks and grenade launchers? I'm in love with you, but future you is trying to murder me? Queso doesn't exist in the future, and now we have to save the human race? Steamy make-out sessions in a time machine? My mind is abuzz with questions, but I sense they aren't the ones you were trying to make me ask.

The Hitchcock quote is really throwing off the flow for me. I'm not sure it adds much, it just reiterates what you've already established in the preceding paragraph.

I've never been real fond of summaries that just "tell" me what the book is about. (Though this is probably a personal preference sort of thing so feel free to ignore this.) I'd rather read a piece of narrative, like the first paragraph, that throws me right into the story. Vague descriptors of "dilemmas", "surprises", "great escape" don't do much to entice me to read it. I'd rather have something that indicates the voice of the book.

I hope something in there helps!