Thoughts from Blurb Land

I wrote the blurb for Xmas Carol last week but I don't like it much. I just don't have a knack for writing pithy descriptions. I need more elbow room! Also, I hate blurbs. Since they often contain spoilers, and you don't know if one will or won't reveal too much, you can't read any of them. How does that make sense? I think blurbs should be vanquished. All we need is a title, an author, an image -- and an evocative phrase like "An Artificially Intelligent Horror Story". (Thanks, Casey!) Heck, what more do you need?

Anyway, because of this foray into short-form writing, I've been highly blurb-conscious of late. I see blurbs everywhere. I even see obituaries as "people blurbs". But you know who does the best blurbs? The folks who write the movie descriptions for TV listings. They have this itty-bitty space for a description and yet they have fun with it. Take, for instance, this treasure:

The Shanghai Gesture (1941)  Gambling den boss Mother Gin Sling drags her British ex-lover's daughter into decadence. Gene Tierney, Walter Huston.

Ain't that great? You hardly even need to watch the movie. Anyway, when I'm happy with my blurb, I'll show it to you guys. In the meantime, take two aspirin and call me in the morning.

Spoilers are a good thing?

This story on physorg is about a study coming out next week in Psychology Today. It says that spoilers don't ruin the pleasure of reading a book -- even when it's a detective story or a suspense novel! In fact, they go on to say that spoilers can enhance the reader's experience. Well, I don't believe a word of that.

I don't know about you, but I never read the blurbs on the backs of books -- I just go by the cover and author. They tell you way too much on those back covers. The blurbs themselves are spoilers. I hate that.

The topic of spoilers is especially interesting to me because there is no way to talk about Xmas Carol without ruining the book for readers. Its very nature is a spoiler.

Anyway, read the story and see what you think. As for me, I will continue along my chosen path, avoiding spoilers at every turn. And I hope readers will treat it this way too. If they pass the book on to a friend, they should just say "Read this. It's fun."