Take time to deliberate, but when the time for action has arrived, stop thinking and go in.
- Napoleon

Sunday, February 22, 2009

New Take on an Old Try

This was originally called Blurb7 - out of like 15 - and was written before I rewrote the middle and revised the beginning. I revised this to meet the changes I'd made to the book, so I can maybe hit the mark a little closer.

Let's see if this is an improvement.

Raised in the strangling embrace of the Union, Mary Jones was supposed to be exactly what they wanted her to be, to think what they wanted her to think, and to live how they wanted her to live. She failed. Fired from her job and denounced as incompetent, she wanders into a curious old store, and into the arms of a secret society known as the Order. Before she knows it, these strange people have chosen her for a mission no one else has survived. Unless Mary wants her life to remain the same, she must accept their plan to escape the city and discover whether other people still exist in the world—if only to prove life can go on without Union control. What she finds beyond the ravages of a long forgotten war will force her to accept the only way her city will be free is to eradicate the Union, even if she has to do it herself. But when she made the promise to free her people, she never dreamed they wouldn’t want her help.

Seems a little wordy to me, but it says what I need it to say. I think it addresses some of the concerns Kristen raised in her comments on the previous post. (Or maybe I'm just too close to see how I'm missing the mark.) Any help anyone can provide will be appreciated. In fact, if you leave a help-related comment about this blurby thing between today's posts and the time my poll closes, I'll enter you into a drawing for a prize - just as a thanks.

Maybe 2009 will be my year.

1 comment:

Kristen Painter said...

It feels a little long. Plus I think you need some sort of explanation about what the Union is:

...the Union, the elite few who rule the city,... or something like that.

I also don't think Mary's choice of her life remaining as it is or accepting the mission seems like enough of a consequence. If it were accepting the mission or losing her life, then yes. But even a sucky status quo is better than a life-threatening mission in service of a secret society (in my opinion.)

Lastly, I still don't get a clear sense of what genre this. Futuristic? Urban Fantasy? Not sure.