Insecure Writer’s Support Group Monthly Blog Post for November

Hello again! Time is flying past us faster than ever it seems. It’s hard to believe that we’re less than two months away from the end of another year.

In terms of my writing, 2020 and 2021 have given me a lot of at home writing time, but I’m not sure that I’ve been as productive as I can be. I’ve become even more critical of my own work, constantly editing and re-editing material, including some previously published stuff, hoping that the revised books will find greater success out there. I’ve recently completed an Amazon ad class that taught me how to target my book market, but it is a long, slow process, and I’m at the very bottom of my learning curve. For that reason, I’ve recently given a lot of thought to the books out there on my shelf that aren’t selling.

This month’s optional question:
What’s harder to do, coming up with your book title or writing the blurb?

Titles used to come to me fairly easily. They were always part of the story, found inside the book someplace. For example, In The White Carnation, a romance thriller in the Harvester Files Series, the title comes from the clues the killer leaves with the heroine. The White Lily, the second book in the series, refers not only to the heroine but also to the killer’s method of gaining entry into the homes of his victims, delivering bouquets which contain white lilies. The same holds true for the other two books in the series, The White Iris and The White Dahlia.

The books in my Cocktails for You Series, romantic comedies, are all named after cocktails, some more well-known than others. I started this series shortly after the pandemic hit, and we were told to stay home. It was the last days of winter and needing to write something lighter, I tried a complete new style–first person POV. It’s no secret that beer and alcohol sales went up dramatically during the lockdowns. We started a daily Happy Hour at home, me becoming a substutite for the social time my hubby usually enjoyed at our local pub, then shut down. And so I wrote: Tequila Sunrise, Champagne Cocktail, Buck’s Fizz, The Tipsy Pig, Make Mine a Manhattan, and my WIP, Emerald Glow. I suppose like everyone else, I look for ways to make my titles interesting and appealing, and maybe just a little bit different. Since I use a professional cover artist, it’s her job to create the perfect cover not only for the book but for today’s market.

But when it comes to blurbs, that’s where I have trouble. Blurbs and synopses are my Achilles’ heel. I try to give them an intriguing hook, something I’ve learned a bit more about in my ad course. Then I try to follow a who’s who, what’s what, what’s at stake, and what’s the ulimate prize, danger, risk format. Does it always work? No. According to my ad school teacher, the ultimate prize in fiction is love, death, or enlightenment. So over the next few months, I plan to carefully examine the blubs on all of my published books and tweak them with his advice in mind. Will it work? I don’t know, but it can’t hurt to try.

What about you? What is it that draws you to a particular book? The cover? The title? The blurb? And if you’re writing a book, which is harder for you?

Happy reading and writing! I’ll see you next month. Check out other posts here. https://www.insecurewriterssupportgroup.com/p/iwsg-sign-up.html