RHYS BOWEN: When people ask me what I’m reading right now, I
always have to say it isn’t a book I have chosen to read, it’s a book I’ve been
asked to blurb. Unfortunately I have become the go-to blurber for any
historical novel written between 1850 and 1950. If a book written in that time
period comes out, you’ll probably see a quote from me on the cover.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m happy to do this. I have benefited
from some wonderful blurbs myself from top writers. Thank you Lee Child, Louise
Penny, Charlaine Harris, Laura Lippman, and the Reds. I think it’s a task that I should embrace. The
only negative is that I don’t get time
to read books I want to. I do try to be quite ethical in my blurbing. I always
read the book. I let the editor know, ahead of time, that if I find anything
wrong in a book I won’t endorse it. And you’ll be amazed how often I find
things that make me wince: in one book the lead character came out of the Savoy
hotel and “took a cab to a less salubrious part of London under Charing Cross
Station.” I actually laughed. It’s about
a hundred yards down the Strand, and certainly not less salubrious. I used to
walk it every day when I was working for the BBC at Bush House.
This was a writer who had never been to London. I have had
authors who address the butler as Mr. Soames when the butler is always referred
to by his last name only except by other servants. I had a character who took a
degree in ornithology from University College London. This gave me a good
chuckle as I’m a graduate and nobody offered me a degree in ornithology!
The worst howler was a character coming from Yorkshire into
Victoria Station. Anyone who knows London realizes that trains from Yorkshire
come into the north of the city (King’s Cross, actually) and Victoria is on the
south. Sorry. That book didn’t get a blurb.
I was thinking about the amount of time I spend reading
other writer’s books and I decided I could perhaps make it into a very
lucrative career. A blurb from Rhys for a fee. It would create a table of fees,
based on the enthusiasm of the blurb.
For ten dollars: This was an okay book.
For fifty dollars: I enjoyed this book.
For a hundred dollars: This was a good book.
For a thousand dollars: Wow! This was the best book I’ve
read this year.
Okay, before you send me books, I was joking.
And if I get a book I really don’t like but have agreed to
blurb? A really bad book? What do I do then?
This was a book unlike any I’ve read before. I couldn’t wait
to finish it. So different.
OR
Wow. What a book!
(Again I’m joking. I would never endorse a book I thought
was bad. My name, my reputation will be on the cover of that book). However
sometimes I have agreed to give a quote to a friend or a friend of a friend.
Awkward. I once had a book to blurb that finished with the bad guy getting
strangled by a boa constrictor. I said, “Comes to a really gripping
conclusion.”
So I am interested to know: have you ever picked up a book
because it has an endorsement from a favorite author on the cover? And fellow writers: how do you handle
blurbing a book you really don’t like?
I have to go now. There is a book waiting to be blurbed on
my desk.
