Today's Quote:  Good grammar is like good table manners.  It varies with circumstances, but something about it always remains constant. -- REA's Handbook of English

Synonym alliteration du jour:  convoke:  call, collect, convene


So I'm in the middle of publishing Painted Boots, my debut novel, and I need a serious distraction.  You'd think I could settle down and work on book deux, which yes, is in progress and has nothing to do with book one, but to tell the truth Aspen Brand and her beloved Kyle are so etched into my thoughts that I'm not quite ready to jump track into Maya's world.

If you followed that, you're psychic.

So while I write my business plan and finish up with Createspace and plot my blog tour and establish my on-line platform, and all in the hazy shadow of my day job and family life, I thought I'd relax with one of my favorite past-times:  reading cover copy.

Weird, I know, but I love the blurbs people write on their back covers and jacket flaps.  Good blurbs are the frosting that hints THIS CAKE WILL BE DELICIOUS.  They so amazingly hard to write.  Try it.  Your hair will gray.

A well-written blurb is hard proof that a writer knows what her story is all about.  And though that may sound asinine, I mean, don't we writers know what our stories are about?, I've read enough of my own crap-blurbs (and the crap-blurbs of others) to know that knowing the heart of your story and being able to convey it are actually the same thing.  In other words, you need to know your story really well to have clearly communicated whatever you meant to say in the first place.  I think this is why some stories ramble on.  But I digress....

Today's cover-copy comes from the astonishingly fabulous and gut-bustingly funny The Princess Bride, by William Goldman.  If you haven't read it, read it!  (Don't you hate how read and read are spelled the same?)

(drum-roll please)  "What happens when the most beautiful girl in the world marries the handsomest prince in the world...and he turns out to be a son-of-a-bitch?"

Seriously.  Read it.  It's an awesome book.