Happy Friday everyone! I hope you are all staying safe and taking care of yourselves and your loved ones! Everything is fine in the Iris household: my husband is working from home and I LOVE having him home. I’m not one of these people who’s like gaaaaah my spouse needs to go back to work or I’ll kill them! On the contrary, I told my husband this morning when we met in the kitchen for coffee/tea break that I’ll be sad when he has to go back and work at the office 🙂
I know I’ve been pretty silent here lately and it’s only been a bunch of promo posts, but I’ve had loots of big crap going on in my life (aside for the whole pandemic thing) so I’ve been really stressed out. Most of it is worked out now, though, so hopefully my life will go back to normal soon. Or at least as normal as it can currently be, of course.
The weather has been lovely here for several weeks, so I’m spending a lot of time on my patio, enjoying the spring, the sunshine, and the warmth. Sometimes I’m writing (I won’t win Camp NaNoWriMo this year, that’s for sure!), but sometimes I’m just having a pot of tea and keeping in touch with friends and family. Out there, under the clear blue sky, with no social media or news sites open on any of my devices, life feels almost normal.
But no more lingering on the current world situation. Instead I thought I’d tell you about five things in a book blurb that will make me go “NOPE!” and put the book back on its virtual bookshelf and immediately forget about it. In no particular order:
- “[Name] isn’t looking for love” – this means the character will blow hot and cold and I just want to have sex but no relationship, and there will be some drama around the 75% mark that will make me roll my eyes, and nope. Just nope. All I want is the romance and I want the guys to want the romance, so this is a big no-no for me.
- The word “misunderstandings” – you know how I feel about misunderstandings by now, right? Talk to each other, people!!
- “Super muscular alpha jock guy likes to work hard and play hard” – come OOOON! This is so done to death and I just want the shy guy or the chubby guy or the ordinary guy or the nerdy guy or the cute guy or the gamer guy or the femme guy or…you get it…to find love. Basically anything except a chest-pounding alpha male guy. (unless we’re talking shifters and he’s an ACTUAL alpha, then it’s fine! 🙂 )
- When the blurb is five hundred words long – reading the blurb isn’t supposed to take ten minutes. Keep it short and simple, please!
- Anything with time limits – and with that I mean vacation romances or the likes. I don’t like the “will their relationship be able to survive when they go back to their normal lives?”-aspect of this trope. I want the “ever after” in the HEA. It’s not called HUTVE (happily until the vacation ends) is it?? 😀
Tell me: what things in a blurb will make you go NOPE! 🙂
I also want to share something awesome with you. Since my publisher and I made All I See free, it’s been climbing the (free) charts at Amazon. Look at this:
I mean…number 3 in Gay Romance and 432 in the entire free store?? That’s pretty awesome, isn’t it?! These are all the free lists of course, but still!! YAAAY for Theo and Kieran.
Theo and Kieran have been together for five years. They’re very happy…behind closed doors. Theo accepted from the start that Kieran isn’t out to his conservative parents and has a lot to lose if they find out about his sexuality.
But a moment of sadness at a wedding changes things. Theo is faced with a decision: live the rest of his life in secret…or break it off.
Or is there a third alternative?
M/M Contemporary / 4633 words
Nell Iris 
I’m glad you’re enjoying your peaceful patio. I’ve been spending time out on mine, too. Constantly jumping up to do something with/for the kids, though, so not quite as peaceful, but still enjoyable!
My blurb-nopes that’ll usually make me quickly move on are if it’s poorly written, either wording-choice or grammar-wise, since it doesn’t likely bode well for the story. If the issues are minor, I’ll at least see if it passes the story sample test if the blurb otherwise makes the story look appealing (on the off chance the book itself, although not the blurb, was run through a good editor). I’m also pretty allergic to those first-person blurbs that usually give something from each MCs perspective. How did that trend even get started?
I’m so glad that All I See is catching the love it deserves! Woo! ❤️
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Lol, yes, those first person blurbs aren’t great…and you KNOW I don’t have a problem with first person, but it really doesn’t work in blurbs 😀 And I don’t know how the trend started, but maybe the author wants to show (or warn) the readers that the book is told in 1st POV since some readers are pretty allergic to it? 😀
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🤣
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I try not to read blurbs if I can get away from them. I do my best to look for tropey clues and other small hints instead. I’m a sucker for series that have character arcs with large casts that have two primaries in each book. E. Davies, Susan Hawke, A.E. Wasp, & Nora Phoenix are some of my faves who do this well. 💖
A big noper for me is the billionaire trope or the pecks on pecks muscle god thing. I like evenly matched sarcasm and snark, the build of the bodies is sexy when described through the eyes and emotions of the other MC rather than the MC describing himself (I hate that).
Anyway, the biggest thing that turns me off in a blurb is having reviews in them. 😏 It might just be me, but it feels like cheating the reader of a good appetizer that potentially spoils the whole meal. I’ve clicked the “back” button on numerous books that had reviews where a decent blurb should be, and I’m not that big a fan of blurbs in the first place, but by God and greyhound, I still need some clues about the damn book, not Bessie Jean’s opinion on it. If I wanted that, I’d go to the reviews page. *sigh…
Okay, rant over**giggle…😁
So, that’s the two cents of a grumpy old dragon lady, for what it’s worth. 😜
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Oh, the two cents of a grumpy old dragon lady is worth a lot to me!! ❤️ But I have to ask: if you don’t read blurbs, how do you decide which books to read?? 🙂
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