I’m traveling this weekend. Well, I’ve traveled, and I’m in Connecticut visiting my son. So this will be a short post, as we are going to be running around today taking in museums and possibly an aquarium. I was thinking, as I was traveling yesterday, that I should try and absorb enough information to write something afterwards. As I was crawling through traffic driving out of Boston and (eventually) into Providence Rhode Island, I looked up at a railway overpass, and there, in ornate graffiti letters overtop the green and peeling original paint, and various other painted tags, someone had spray-painted the word POTION with each letter as large as the riveted section of steel. If that’s not a story prompt, I don’t know what is. What would it spark in you? Give me a scene or even a complete micro-fiction in the comments!
Or if you prefer, feedback on the blurb I drafted for Supporting Ragnarok while on the plane. What do you think? Hooky enough?
Master Sergeant Danny Peterson’s thirty-year career had been in supply until he got himself in the wrong place at the wrong time, and died heroically in combat. When he woke up dead, it was into a timeless nightmare of an unending battle that swirled outside of time in a place they called Valhalla. Now, the only hope he has is to carry out the mission given by a mysterious messenger. Whether he likes it or not, they have to support Ragnarok… if that battle can ever happen to bring everything to an end.
It might be impossible. He has a handful of men and the chaos of an infinite warehouse to tame, and after that, the real fight begins… if they can stay sane long enough to fight it.
Danny’s pissed, and he just wanted to go fishing. He’s about to take Ragnarok to the throat of the gods themselves. After inventory is complete.
(Header image: photo by Cedar Sanderson of a train car, taken in Ohio in roughly 2018. Not all artists use canvas)
Mad Genius Club 
16 responses to “Blurb Drafting”
I love Train Car Graffiti.
As to the blurb . . . we need to know what side Danny’s on and is the “real fight” still going to be in Valhalla, or are they taking it to Earth for the end times? How does he feel about that?
Gonna leave that ‘potion’ prompt alone. I wrote a short story involving a potion and it wound up being 30,000 words.
For the other, I got 2 T-shirt logos:
What? Valhalla has REMFs?
Spending Eternity in glorious Valhalla. Still a supply puke.
Only two, and they aren’t happy about it.
Good blurb — works for me. 🙂
Re: Potion, one thing that sticks in my mind is not just the literal “to supply the shelves of a magical supply store”, but an “Emergency Response” on its way to a geological crisis (sealing a crack?) or an alien infestation of magical pests that need special treatment.. (for them or against them).
For grins I did a thing on your blurb:
Valhalla is no place for a loggie. But Master Sergeant (Logistics) Danny Peterson made a career error and died heroically in combat after thirty years of nice boring logistics work. Now he’s stuck in a nightmare of unending battle called Valhalla. Seems the recruiters lied about Valhalla too.
Now, the only hope he has is to carry out the mission given by a mysterious messenger. Whether he likes it or not, they have to support Ragnarok… if that battle can ever happen to bring everything to an end.
Danny’s pissed, and he just wanted to go fishing. He’s about to take Ragnarok to the throat of the gods themselves. After inventory is complete.
Hah! I like it.
If it works for you and ends up on the cover I would be incredibly flattered.
The first sentence needs pruning.
“Master Sergeant Danny Peterson’s thirty-year career in supply ended unexpectedly –if heroically — in combat.”
I agree: that really does improve things.
Some thoughts about the blurb since you ask.
I like the hint of humor/whimsy, but it only comes in the last paragraph. It’s not hinted at earlier. Is this a comic look at Norse mythology as ‘lived’ by a modern (or maybe future) supply Master Sergeant? Or are there serious stakes? What exactly is Peterson’s ultimate goal–to bring about Ragnarok and oblivion? Does victory at Ragnarok mean Peterson gets to go fishing in his preferred afterlife? Then what does defeat mean?
Also, as I assume you realize, an adventure story centered on supply is a hard sell to most of us who have been raised on stories of combat heroics. Maybe you should start with the old dictum, Tacticians study battles. Strategists study logistics to at least make the stakes clear.
Well, then this book is likely to sell poorly. It is a story of men and women fighting to carve order from chaos so they can supply the last great battle. The combat action scenes are all focused on them defending their supply depot.
Maybe, but I think you just have to make the case for why the heroes are useless without their supplies. Carving order from chaos is always a heroic goal after all.
And warriors without supplies aren’t going to last long. Part of the reason I wanted to write a support personnel story is how much crap they catch from who are supposed to be on the same team.
Perhaps you should lead off with that “Supply is supply — whether his thirty-year Army career or his new gig at Valhalla, Master Sergeant Danny Peterson finds that supply is always essential, and no one ever respects it.”
Probably needs improvement.
An army without bread, beans and bullets is just a bunch of hungry guys sitting around unable to fight the enemy.
“He has a handful of men and the chaos of an infinite warehouse to tame, making sure the warriors on the frontlines have ammo in their ammo cans, not cookies.” (reference to that embarrassing defeat the Brits suffered shortly before Rourke’s Drift but if there’s some equally disturbing logistics foulup in in the novel that that can be referenced briefly, maybe go with that.) To manage expectations, it might be worth mentioning that their big fight occurs when the baddies take the fight to supply depot (somewhere in the “and after that the real fight begins” section.)
Sorry for running late.