As I have started work on Pirates, and in order to start getting things ready for the next, worked on the ‘blurb’ for Died today. Of course, this may change en route, but it is designed to get my creative juices going. So here goes:
. . . . .
“The First Time I Died…”

He is known as Mr Esterhaze, but that is not his real name. He is known for his magnificent puppet theatre, but that is not his real occupation.
Jill, however, knows the truth. She knows because her best friend is one of the little girls that Esterhaze has killed. And now they’re out for revenge…
. . . . .
Definately the sort of book that I’d like to read.

Yesterday I had two strange experiences. The first was the formal interview required under French law before one can be fired. Surreal wasn’t the word. No, sick was more like it. You are being praised to the heavens to such a degree that it starts becoming suspicious, but you’re still being fired. I think that I would have prefered the treatment of a boss that I heard about from a friend: you were called into an office; he would have his checkbook in front of him—“How much?” was the question. And you collected your papers on the way out.

Then I tried to write a synopsis of Juliet. I consulted about 15 sites through Google. All explained in length how to write a winning synopsis that is guaranteed to sell your book. I imagine that the quality of writing and the actual book should also have some merits, so I took the titles with a small truckload of salt. What I did manage to pull together was a rather sketchy—and at times contradictory—structure and modus operandi. The part that I found the hardest was the idea that the final document should just be one page long. I tried that, it became a blurb, not a synopsis. Yet, all the sample synopses that I found online were about 3-4 pages, so I don’t feel bad about mine being in the same case.

Initially, Juliet has a complicated structure—a ‘Y’ shape. With two stories paralleling each other until they join. During the forks of the Y, events happen on one side and are paralleled on the other. To make things worse from my point of view, initially everything was chronological, but this made practically all the first scenes, rabbit ones and Juliet didn’t get introduced until chapter 2 (when reading this to Kim, she just assumed that Juliet was a rabbit too. Oops! I changed everything to start with Juliet and establish her first). In the synopsis this comes over as choppy. Now, of course, because of all that, I have severe doubts about everything. And it took about 4 draughts to get the beginnings of the current synopsis.

The fact that I’m trying to write the synopsis is actually good news. Thomas, a friend of Ludivine’s, knows the editor in the Children’s division of a reputable British publisher. I must send her over the first three chapters and the synopsis. Now, my reasonable self knows that nothing will come of this except a polite refusal letter in a few months. However, it is nice to know that I will get even that. It also means a slight foot in the door when Pirates (which will be better than Juliet by a magnitude of 10) is finished. And that could be fun. And if that is not the one… well there is always Died.