Thanks to CataNetwork for letting me be a guest Blogger today.

Today I will talk about pitching a blurb at a writer’s conference or convention to an editor or agent. I have done this now a few times. It’s how I got to submit Beast Magic to Phaze. How I pitched a novel to an agent at last year’s James River Writers Conference. And how I pitched at Romantic Times the same novel.

Blurbs are selling your story or novel.

A blurb is a short summary or some words of praise accompanying a creative work, showing it to be short, smart and catching the interest of said agent or editor. It’s telling the storyline most times in only a paragraph.

A good blurb neatly and quickly summarizes the content it points to.

It promises that the content will provide a benefit or reward to the user. It engages the user with an appropriate tone or “voice”. It gets clicked.

Here is the blurb from Beast Magic that I used:

They came from two different worlds.
Ramses was a werelion. Shana Tory was human. The Dreaming foretold them as soul mates.
So Ramses tracked her down in America, and when he found her, made her his and brought her back home with him to the South African Bushveld.
But others from his pride, led by one evil lioness, do not want them together.
Besides their lives, will their love survive the coming war?

We know Ramses is a werelion and Shana, a human. Both have a dream that they are mates. Ramses finds her and brings her back to South Africa. We put in that there is some bad werelions that do not want them together. The last line is the period to the line.

In essence, a blurb is like a movie trailer. You got the excitement. It pulls you in, makes you want to read it. It’s a synopsis, cut down from 2-3 pages to one tight paragraph.

Another one is from my free read, To Teach an Ancient God, at Romance All eBooks:

Hades had waited a thousand years for Jenna Krinard, or Persephone as she had once been known to him. The problem is, Jenna is a modern woman and she’ll have to teach an old god new tricks in love. What she doesn’t know is how much she’ll learn about love herself.

Three lines say it all.

Here is the blurb from A Season of Strangers by Kat Martin on Amazon. It makes me want to get the book and read it.

Dedicated, driven real estate agent Julie Ferris is enjoying a day at the beach with her sister Laura when a strange, almost undetectable charge fills the air. Then, under the hot Malibu sun, time stops altogether.

Neither sister can explain their “lost day”-nor the blinding headaches and horrific nightmares that follow-but Julie chalks it up to the stress she’s been under since her boss’s son took over Donovan Real Estate.

Patrick Donovan would be a real catch if not for his notorious playboy lifestyle and matching attitude. But when a cocaine-fueled heart attack nearly kills him, Patrick makes an astonishingly fast-and peculiar-recovery. Julie barely recognizes the newly sober Patrick as the same man she once struggled to resist. Maybe it’s the strange beach experience fueling her paranoia, but she can’t help sensing something just isn’t…right.

As Julie’s feelings for Patrick intensify, she’s about to discover how that day at the beach links her newfound happiness with her wildest suspicions….

That one had more than a paragraph to it, but still, it wasn’t a lot, just enough like a movie trailer to hook the reader and reel them in.

Remember, to write a blurb, introduce the characters and reveal their problem that might drive them apart or bring them together. Then add the last sentence as the hook that will haul in the agent or editor, the selling point of the novella or novel. It can be a question if the lovers’ love will survive the hell they are about to go through, or will the hero or heroine learn something new themselves while teaching others? Whatever it must be the final sale point to sell the storyline.

Sapphire Phelan is an author of erotic and sweet paranormal, fantasy, and science fiction romance. She also writes as Pamela K. Kinney, for horror, fantasy, science fiction, and a nonfiction ghost book, Haunted Richmond, Virginia. She lives in Virginia with her husband and two cats, Ripley and Bast. You can find out more about her and what she has or will be coming out at her website: http://FantasticDreams.50megs.com Check out her MySpace at http://www.myspace.com/SapphirePhelan and subscribe to her newsletter:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/SapphirePhelansParanormalNewsletter .

She admits she can always be found at her desk and on her computer, writing. And yes, the house and husband sometimes suffers for it!

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