The dread Synopsis, Blurbs, Back Cover Copy, and their friends

First things first. Here's the (tentative and possibly subject to more edits) back cover blurb for Weather!

Julian Lambert has protected those with supernatural abilities from enslavement and death his entire life. But there is more to Julian than even he suspects, and when his own powers surface, he finds himself as much at risk as his charges. Now he’s no more than a useful tool, with nowhere to hide from the hideous fate that awaits him. He’s saved others, but can he save himself?

I hate writing the synopsis for a novel. Hell, I don't even know what the proper pluralization for synopsis is. But I hate writing them. By synopsis, of course, I mean the document in which you are supposed to relate all the major plot points and the resolution of the novel in an engaging and witty way so that whomever you're pitching it to can get a good idea of what happens in your novel without actually reading it. Actually, it's at the point where I'm pretty sure I've never written a synopsis that's made it out of the house. 

Blurbs/Back Cover Copy are easier. They're the little description that goes on the back cover of the book. These can actually be fun. Writing one is as close as I ever get to outlining. (I'm one of those awful people who sits down in front of the computer and just types). The way I get ideas for this varies. Two of my favorite inspirations are trailers and anime opening sequences. 

A blurb is more or less a trailer for your book. You stick all the exciting things in it, add a bit of deception, and release it into the wilds in the hopes that it'll make people want to go see it or at least go, "Well, the special effects seem okay..." 

As for anime opening sequences, I find it helpful to think about what an opening sequence for one of my stories would look like. (I have, many times, burst out giggling upon envisioning my characters in one of those slice-of-life type high school dramas, but that fact is neither here nor there...) It helps me figure out which characters I should focus on 'pitching' to my audience, and lets me find a way to make all of them as heroic and exciting as possible. Since a number of my characters fall on the 'sullen and snarky' side of the line, this is important. 

Also they're shiny and flashy. I like shiny and flashy things way too much. 

*Ahem* In any case, blurbs are important, even if they are hugely annoying to write. And since one of my friends has given me a cold, I am going to go drink massive quantities of hot lemon and honey and hope this post made some sort of sense. 

Food, glorious food!

I have been rather ill behaved of late with sporadic posting, but I have an excellent excuse for that, which is midterms. Yay midterms! Also getting things in on time to the publisher, which is just as much of a thing. 

This weekend, facing two imminent midterms and writing-related-work, I kind of...froze. I sat there in front of my computer and decided that not only could I not take another moment of trying to memorize exactly what Romanus IV was doing in 1011 (answer, getting his butt handed to him by Alp Arselan at the Battle of Manzikert because he had left his reinforcements in the hands of an uncle of the child-emperor he was determined to depose), but if I had to puzzle over the exact weight of my main character again I would either scream or crawl under the bed and never come out.

So seizing my tolerant housemate by the arm, I went to the grocery store and then raided the cookbook shelf (my parents, convinced that I would starve without suitable instruction, have given me more cookbooks for my apartment than most people see in a lifetime). 

I then proceeded to go through all of the dozen eggs I'd just bought. The products of this were rewarding, to say the least. 

I must confess, though, I did not make this first one. These are the tolerant housemate's lemon bars, which may have won the award as the best lemon bars ever, even over my mother's! (Sorry mom!)

We baked them in a pie dish, since we do not actually own a small, deep sided pan suitable for lemon bars, brownies, or other such delights (a thing that must be remedied soon. I got another dozen eggs on Tuesday). 

These are cinnamon chocolate chip muffins. Though the flavor was lovely, I have somehow mastered the technique of making the tops of the muffins perfectly tender and their bottoms something akin to cardboard. I blame the fact that I left the wet ingredients in the fridge and the butter congealed and made the dough a funny texture. Moving on. 

 Here are the lemon bars, freed from the wax paper and the pie dish. In future, the wax paper will be omitted. It was...difficult. 

This last one, I cannot take much credit for, as it came from a box. It's an almond sweet bread--think a giant cinnamon roll except with crushed almonds and almond icing. The tolerant housemate loathes almonds, but I love them. (So does my main character in Weather, one of the few things we agree on!) I also added caramel to the center, which was a success, though it did make the bread ooze a little in the oven. 

So now, dear reader, you know how I retained my sanity this weekend. After all the baking, I went back to studying and working on other projects quite happily. It might have been something to do with the lemon bar I was munching. 

Irrelevant reflections before class

...isn't it interesting how, the instant you need to do something requiring the dormitory internet, it goes on the blink? That was last night. It was fun! And by that I mean I went "Stuff this!" and went to sleep instead. 

Or consider socks. I don't know if this is common, but I live in a state of constantly needing new socks. I'm not sure how I do this; I buy enormous quantities of the things, but somehow I never have enough, and all of them have holes in the toes. It's tempting to propose shoe-monsters living in the toes of my sneakers as the culprits. 

Or how the amount of work you get done on a given day is inversely proportionate to the amount of time you have free to get said work done. That's loads of fun too! 

In other words, things are proceeding as crazily as usual and I really ought to be going to class. 

Things to do rather than fret

I've just sent in the first draft of Weather to the editor, and of course I'm now sitting down and realizing all the things I want to fix in it (and would be absolutely mortified for other people to find!). But that's not very useful so I've been doing homework to take my mind off of fretting. 

And lab work. I spent most of this morning in the laboratory with a handlens and huge quantities of enormous bullfrog tadpoles, examining mouthparts and trying to determine the extent of bleaching to said mouthparts. The lab I work in is a lot of fun, as the professor who runs it will turn up every so often with a mess of salamanders or toads and there are turtles absolutely everywhere all the time. I started out working with insects in my first lab, and sea urchins in my second and it's a delight to meet actual vertebrates while doing research. I'm only handling dead critters at this point, though. 

I had lab meeting soon after that, which was full of math but still interesting. I snuck out early when it hit the awkward silence stage as everyone stared at the paper and tried to think up comments about it or made a last minute attempt on the hummus before all of it disappeared. The lab meetings are very well provided for in the food department. 

Then there was home and homework and last minute dinners because we'd expected to go shopping and get dinner out and then didn't (long story). So in the end, I distracted myself fairly well from worrying about whether my manuscript is a complete embarrassment. 

Well, until now. 

Stuff it, I'm going to go play video games. 

Hello!

I'm Isobelle Winter, a student and writer. I've just placed my first book, Weather, a steampunk young adult fantasy novel with Eternal Press, and so have had to dive into the weird and whacky world of online marketing. This seems to involve creating more online accounts than I can shake a stick at, and so the keen observer, peering at the sidebar of my blog, should be able to discern links to terribly fascinating places such as Twitter and Tumblr and Facebook, where one may see the shenanigans I get up to when I ought to be editing, studying, working in the laboratory, or all three.

I like hedgehogs and caramel, the former because they are absurdly cute, the latter because it is delicious. I'm fond of food in general, so I ought to be talking about that a lot. I also hope to post bits and pieces about the whole 'getting published' thing, as soon as I sort my brains out from the surprise of it all!