IWSG: Titles vs. Blurbs

 

I'm writing this post on Halloween, but it's time to welcome you to November. If anyone reading this is participating in National Novel Writing Month, good luck to you! I'll be happy if I finish the first draft of Restaurants and Revenge this month. (I'm well over 50,000 words, but I've changed my mind a couple of times about who the murderer is.) 

Since this is the month for writers, it's a good time for another Insecure Writer's Support Group Post. Learn more about them on their website, Facebook page, and Twitter feed. Our hosts this month are Kim Lajevardi, Victoria Marie Lees, Joylene Nowell Butler, Erika Beebe, and Lee Lowery.

Our question for November is What's harder to do, coming up with your book title or writing the blurb?

In general, I find it easier to come up with a book title than a blurb. Most novel titles come to me either before I start the story or during the first draft. Sometimes they change, but not often. In contrast, I have to finish the book (not just the first draft, but also revisions) before I tackle the blurb. As a pantser, I don't know all the twists and turns before I start writing, so I need to know the entire story before I can write the blurb. It's also easier to be pithy with a phrase than a paragraph. I feel I need more feedback from readers when writing the blurb, since it's targeted at them.

What do you find harder to write, titles or blurbs? Please let me know in the comments.

Blurb for Murder at Magic Lake

 I've finally started sending out my cozy mystery to beta readers. Here's the blurb for Murder at Magic Lake:

After losing her job, twenty-nine-year-old Abigail Ritter isn’t looking forward to returning to her hometown of Magic Lake, Wisconsin, for her grandmother’s birthday party. All she has to offer her family is her own special fruit juice and tea blend. But when Grandma suffers a fatal accident in her apartment building, The Grand, Abigail’s cousin is blamed. Abigail will have to step up and investigate with the help of her best friend, an intriguing detective, and a magical stuffed fox named Sherlock. Abigail’s got a plan for the Grand and its abandoned restaurant, but will she solve the case or drown in a sea of suspects?

 Please let me know if you have any suggestions for improving it. 

Feedback on Story Title and Blurb

As if I don't have enough writing projects (I've been splitting my writing time between two very different novels), I've returned to the Season Avatars world long enough to write a short story set about fifteen years after Summon the Seasons. This will be the first story in what I'm calling the Selathen Avatars series, and it features Rob, Jenna's son. Rob will be one of the protagonists of the first novel in the Selathen Avatars series, and this story will set up the situation that we'll find him in. I'm hoping to publish the story at the end of September to tie in with my appearance at the Gail Borden Comic Con. The story's already been through a rewrite, but I'm still trying to decide on a title. I posted three on Facebook, and of those, "Seeds in Strange Places" was the favorite. It doesn't capture an important element of the story, though. Some possible alternatives are listed below:

"Seeds and Visions"
"The Season of Visions"
"The Seeds of Vision."

Any favorites? 

I'd also appreciate your thoughts on the blurb:

As the son of Challen’s Summer Avatar, Rob has learned everything that can be done with plants without magic. But he is also the son of the Fip Empire’s War Avatar, expected to marry a Fip princess despite his lack of interest in women. The Fip’s God of War also wants to use Rob’s strange vision for His own purposes. Can Rob sort through the conflicting demands on him to create his own path?

Blurb for Summon the Seasons

Line edits are just about done for Summon the Seasons, though I'm still adding a few details to the text here and there. In the meantime, there are other parts to the publishing process that I need to take care of, like the blurb. Here's a rough draft; feel free to leave feedback in the comments:

Kay might be the youngest, smallest, and least confident Season Avatar, but she has the most powerful magic of all—weather magic. Only she can draw magic from Chaos Season, the magical weather storm that mixes up the seasons in Challen, and share it with the rest of her quartet. Now that she also has spirit magic and can contact the souls of dead Season Avatars, her quartet finally has a chance to unite all twelve Season Avatars and end Chaos Season permanently.

Achieving this goal will not be easy. Kay and her sister Avatars need three more bones from the dead Avatars. To obtain them, they must travel from one side of Challen to the other, evading the King’s Watch and Selathens who want to protect their patron demigoddess, Salth, creator of Chaos Season. On the journey, Kay’s deepest beliefs about her God and her longtime enemy, Dorian, will be challenged. If Kay loses her newfound courage, she will fall before Salth, and the rest of the Season Avatars and her country with her.

Blurb for Young Seasons Short Story Collection

I'm still not done drafting one of the stories in my Young Seasons short story collection, but I'm already starting to think about what I'll need to publish the collection. This will be in eBook format only for now. (At some point, I'll combine more of my short stories into an eBook/paper collection, and I'll include the Young Seasons stories.) I'm not ready for Maria Zannini to design the cover yet, but I have started working on the blurb. It's a little more challenging to write one for a collection since there are four separate stories, not just one. Here's my first draft:

A child must tap into the Spring Avatar’s memories of previous lives as she tries to save her mother and baby brother….

A Winter Avatar with newly woken magic faces enemies she didn’t know she had…

The Fall Avatar must protect a kitten she’s bonded with from her disapproving family….

When the Summer Avatar tries to get the attention of her true love, the wrong person responds to her call….

Before the Season Avatars of Challen came together, The Four Gods and Goddesses of Challen sent Their Avatars to vastly different lives. The challenges the four young women faced shaped them as they grew ready to claim their destinies. Learn more about Gwen, Jenna, Ysabel and Kay as Young Season Avatars. Includes the first chapter of Scattered Seasons, Book Two in the Season Avatars series. 

 Any thoughts? I'm sure I'll need to revise the blurb a couple of times before I come up with a final version. Feel free to leave constructive criticism in the comments.