Busted down the pretext
Hi there.
I wrote a mystery novel.
It’s called Tucson ’93.
It involves a mystery and takes place in Tucson during the summer of 1993.
And I’m excited for everyone to get a chance to read it.
This is the Blurb
You aren’t supposed to judge a book by its cover (which I totally do), but many of us judge books by that promotional text on the back cover. That paragraph or two is known in the industry as a “blurb”. Legend (or Wikipedia) has it that way back in 1906, humorist Gelet Burgess coined the phrase blub while mocking the flowery promotions writers placed on their book jackets. For his own book, he invented a woman named “Miss Belinda Blurb” and put a picture of her on the cover shouting or as he put it, “in the act of blurbing”.
Leave it to a writer to make fun of other writers just trying to market their work.
For this blog, we are going to write the blurb for Tucson ’93 (kind of).
Like it or not, to publish a book, you need a blurb. Per the interweb, the standard advice is to hook potential readers with 100-250 words that weave in the main characters, conflict, and stakes, without spoiling the book.
Easier said than done.
To help accomplish this task, I looked to some of my writing heroes and their blurbs from my favorite books. Maybe I can use what they did as a template for Tucson ’93.
Let’s get started.
Blurb 1: Dance, Dance, Dance by Haruki Murakami
Why not just start with the GOAT. Murakami is my favorite writer and operates at such a high level, I feel unworthy even including him here. Still, I’d like to think reading Murakami gave me permission to let the supernatural into my novel. Here’s the blurb for Dance, Dance, Dance.
Yeah, I can’t even come close to that, but I’ll give it a shot
"A stripper with a giant Neil Young tattoo. A psycho city council member who loves Burt Reynolds. An overly enthusiastic car dealer with a bad temper. A basketball coach who meets the wrong end of a rattlesnake, a black market pet shop owner, and one very inexperienced private investigator who is in way over his head. Combine these characters with Vickers unknown prose and you have Tucson ’93. It is part murder mystery, part nostalgia bait; a fable for our times as catchy as Pearl Jam blasting from the window on an ’83 Olds Omega.
That turned out better than I expected but will it drive those Kindle Unlimited page reads? I wonder what Gelet would say about that.
Blurb 2: The Long Goodbye by Raymond Chandler
If Murakami is my GOAT, Chandler is the OG. I grabbed a copy of The Long Goodbye off my shelf and here’s the blurb:
Maybe this one is a mistake to emulate. I’m learning that if you are Chandler and the hold the championship belt of hard-boiled detective novels, you don’t need to say a lot on the back of your books. “War veteran”, “Nymphomaniac wife”, and “crazy gangster” carry a lot of weight here. I’m not one to immediately back down for a challenge, so in the spirit of epic failures, let’s give it a shot.
LaFleur is hired by a sexy former fling to investigate the death of her dad. Then he finds out that her dad had a nymphomaniac wife, who he’s separated from and may be the key suspect in the case. And now, LaFleur is forced has to crack the case while the cops and a crazy city councilman stand in his way.
Yeah, that’s closer to terrible than terrific. For starters, nobody knows who LaFleur is (maybe 10 years from now that won’t be an issue 🙌). Second, while coach was separated from his wife, calling her a nymphomaniac is as stretch. And third, a “crazy city councilman” does not induce the terror that accompanies a “crazy gangster”. Other than that, it’s perfect.
Blurb 3: IQ by Joe Ide
I’ve read two of the six books in the IQ series, and I thought both were great. The original, IQ, was published in 2016 and brings a more modern sensibility to the genre. As a debut author, this blurb features a bit more exposition. Here it is:
I think this blurb does a great job of both setting up the story and introducing what makes IQ special. That’s a bit problematic for me as my main character is special only for being not special. Nevertheless, here goes nothing.
Tucson, 1993. The temperature has gone from a slow simmer to a raging boil. The locals can handle the heat, but thanks to the completion of the Central Arizona Project, the water supply is now brown.
Uri LaFleur, a gulf war veteran, is scraping by as a private investigator. He’s happy to help his friends, but ten-dollar retainers don’t go very far. When a high school fling hires him to investigate the mysterious death of her dad and pays him more cash than he’s ever seen before, Uri is forced to navigate a city that is much more dangerous than he ever realized.
No one expect Uri to crack the case, but with the help of his best friend, who wants him to join the police force, his girlfriend, who want him to go to college, and his rec basketball team, who just wants him to make a jump shot, it all adds up to one major advantage: When you come from the desert, it never gets too hot.
So which one do you like the best? Let me know by voting in the poll below:
If I like the results, I’ll use that as inspiration for the official Tucson ‘93 blurb. One more request: if you haven’t already, please sign up for my mailing list and I’ll send you the official Tucson ’93 playlist.
See you on the flipside.
-BV