E.S. Raye

I’ve been busy writing away this week, trying to catch up with my New Year’s Resolution of writing one short story every week that I am not working on a larger project like a novel or screenplay (I’ve fallen behind, but I am hopeful that a truly short but impactful flash fiction attempt will catch me up), so I’m keeping this week’s blog a bit short.

That said, I think what I have to share today may be helpful to other writers.

This past week I submitted Gas Giant Gambit to one final independent publisher. I think it’s a good fit for them, as their manuscript wish list includes sci-fi, genre mash-up, and morally gray characters – all of which fit Gus and Gas Giant Gambit to a T!

One of the things they asked for as part of the submission was a blurb. I know writers sometimes struggle with this (I know I do), so I thought I would share what I came up with.

Blurbs are meant to hook the reader and give them a taste of setting, character, and theme, while not giving away too much of the plot, all in under two hundred measly words.

I’m not saying mine is perfect. I’m not even saying it’s going to be the blurb on the book whenever it finally is published. All I’m hoping is that it may help or inspire someone else struggling to write theirs.

So, without further ado, here’s the blurb I submitted along with Gas Giant Gambit:

Something strange is going on on Las Ráfagas.

When Gus—a name the beamslinger is only borrowing—arrives on the fuel mining station floating in the clouds of the gas giant Aeolus looking for a robot bountyhead, she finds the great mining rings still and not functioning. The town has been largely abandoned by its people, and the greedy administrators, Laszlo Leconte and his sons Junior and Aaron, like it that way. They have their own plans for the town.

Gus has her own problems and wants nothing to do with the remaining townsfolk, and when rancher Oscar Vega asks for her help fighting back against the Lecontes she refuses.

But as the strangeness begins to pile up, and she learns that some of the natives—short, spider-like beings—have mysteriously vanished, Gus is forced into action.

Surrounded on all sides, Gus must confront her own deep-seeded greed and learn what it means to fight for something worth dying for.