comments wanted on blurb and tagline

[julesjones]

I need to provide a tagline and blurb for the short story coming out in September, and this publisher doesn't do in-house editing of the blurb. So I could do with a second opinion on mine. I'd like comments from the romance fans in particular, because while this has a love story, it does not have a happy ending - I don't want something that will mislead romance fans into thinking they're getting an HEA or HFN.

One night of your life for seven years of love. But would you pay the price?

A modern man meets one of the sidhe and finds that legends are true, but the sidhe have changed. They have a new bargain to offer mortals who bring them fresh stories. There will be no coming forth from the green hillside to find that decades have gone by in the real world, the old friends and loves... old. But there is still a price to pay to have a fairy lover.

(5,500 words, speculative fiction, and yes there's a reason why I'm calling it specfic rather than fantasy.)

Comments

[jhall1]

This seems very familar, though I think last time it was the blurb to sell the story to the publisher that we were considering. It looks fine to me, except that a proportion of your intended readership might not know who the sidhe are. (Caveat: I'm not a romance fan, though I don't have anything against the genre.)

(I would have replied on LJ, but it's having one of its periodic sulking fits.)

[julesjones]

Right on both counts -- it was the synopsis with the query letter I was test-driving last time. That had to give the ending, this one *mustn't* give the ending but still needs to make it clear to my usual profic audience that it's not one of my romances.

[katlinel]

That last sentence definitely suggests to me that it won't be the standard happy ending of romance.

[julesjones]

Excellent. :-)

[choirwoman]

I'm not much of a romance fan --not straight-up romance, anyway-- but I'd absolutely read that.

[julesjones]

Well, it's a reprint of something that originally appeared in a webzine, so you may have seen it already. :-)

It's not genre romance, but because I'm known on the profic side as a romance author who writes a lot of cross-genre, I'm a bit worried that my usual readership will see my name and fail to realise that it's specfic rather than cross-genre.

[choirwoman]

Hm, can't remember reading it (but then I haven't been reading zines lately, unsubscribed from a couple when the brain-melt was very bad. (Mostly solid again now, though, so I might seek out some of my old favourites.) Could you tell me, privately if you prefer, so I won't get frustrated searching and/or guessing?

[julesjones]

It was in Forbidden Fruit, which was an online zine which closed some years ago. Their policy was to keep issues up for (IIRC) a year, so the story's been unavailable for a while.

[svilleficrecs.livejournal.com]

Hmm. I'd say something along the lines of "But the price he must pay may be too much." Or too high. Etc. Hints at a darker/sadder ending.

[julesjones]

Thanks for the suggestion, that's helpful.