Writing a few thousand words comes easily for me. Writing a hundred or less is a far greater challenge, especially when that hundred or less must grab the attention of readers and sell books. But what is frustrating is that it seems relatively easy to write a short marketing copy for other people’s books…. Not my own. So if you need help writing blurb or a pull quote or log line for your book, I am sure I can deliver. When it comes to my own work, I guess it’s a case of being too close to it.

A writer an agonise, for hours, over a single word. And on this date, I did.

I also find deciding on a cover design a challenge. So when I completed a near-final draft of A Will of Deceit (at the time named The Inheritance), I posted a cover design I was considering on a Facebook Group for feedback on book covers. 

Now, when one posts anything on Facebook, one should expect everything from incredibly kind but idle praise through to constructive help and then insults and abuse. Sad, but that’s the world we live in. It’s inhabited by all kinds of people. Happily, most I encounter are kind and polite, and I’m fortunate that some I encounter are incredibly generous with their knowledge, expertise and support. I’ve been blessed! But I’m digressing.

One lovely lady, striving to be helpful, designed a very different suggested cover for my book. I had included some words on the cover:

“a hotshot lawyer, a narcissistic client, a contested will, and a deceased who was never who she claimed to be”

This lovely and talented lady created a very nice image, though one I felt was totally inappropriate for the story. But what really threw me was that she changed the word ‘’deceased’’ to ‘’decedent’’. 

Now, the very literate among readers might know what ‘’decedent’’ means, particularly Americans, because it’s actually an American legal term. (She possibly didn’t know it was somewhat geographically specific.) But I felt that it was the wrong word in a phrase intended to appeal to the average reader.

This lovely and talented lady became quite emphatic and argued vehemently that not only was her design perfect for my book - which she had not read - but the word ‘’decedent’’ was correct and ‘’deceased’’ was not.

Eventually, after canvassing advice from writers, as opposed to artists, I opted for the simpler words, ’dead woman’. 

Who would have thought that a debate and dilemma over a single word could occupy eight hours of thought and debate over a period of four days?

Such is the challenge of writing a summary. And this one was only 20 words!