Quote:
Originally Posted by Gregg Bell
Thanks Hitch. Well, they're not all sideways but those two are and I'll tweak that. And I kind of like the blue but I'll experiment with your suggestions. I think I found the key to preparing the reader for the violent first scene thing though. I don't like the new first scene I suggested because it will be a slow start, whereas the first scene I have now is a grabber. Writers like me (think Tim Dorsey) with violent protagonists have playful covers, so if I find those niche readers not only will they not be shocked by the violence, they will be expecting it. Even so, this tweak to the blurb I think will prepare anyone for the violence in the first scene. (It's just a new first paragraph.) Here it is:
Some say she’s a sociopath. Some say she hates men. Some say she just loves animals.
Lainey Tripper is a whiskey-drinking hard-living animal rescue feminist. But she has just this one little problem: she can’t seem to stop killing men.
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I think, if it were my book, I'd change that last line to someething like:
"...this one little problem: wherever she rescues, dead men follow."
Or...
"...this one little problem: wherever Lainey goes, dead men follow."
I think that lends a bit of mystery to it; it preps the prospective reader for the idea that she may well be a murderess, but...it's a bit less blunt, I guess? Or stark? I realize you are trying to prepare them for the violence, but...I dunno, that one line just sort of irks me.
Quote:
Lainey’s the head of the IWS, a radical feminist animal rescue group dedicated to stopping the villainous Donovan from oppressing women and animals. But now Donovan has taken his evil to a new level—he’s systematically stealing Chicago’s dogs. In Lainey’s enthusiasm to stop Donovan, she again kills a lot of men. Her fellow IWS members plead with her to moderate her man-killing tendencies, but Lainey feels the men deserve it, and besides, she must do whatever it takes to save Chicago’s dogs.
Will Lainey stop Donovan in time? And when she’s done, will any men be left alive?
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I still do
NOT know why you are stuck on IWS. I can only surmise that it very specifically means something to YOU, something that you won't repeat or whatever. 'Cuz, it's not playful or fun or...anything, it's just kinda
there. I don't understand why you are resistant to the idea of making something new for it, something that you can make hay with. Almost anything, really.
Just my $.02, of course.
Hitch