Take Heart!

[erastes]

It just goes to show that even a well-known name in gay fiction can have a pretty naff blurb.

A teenager from the Midwest goes to New York to live temporarily with his uncle and aunt, both high-powered advertising executives. He in no way envisions the major theater career that will be his later. Nor do the people he meets—particularly the Army veteran who has just returned from military service to the exclusive community north of New York where the teenager finds himself. Surrounded by the rich and famous, being pursued by an older man, all adds up to a world in which the boy never expected to live, and gives him the impetus to pursue his life as an actor-singer-dancer. From the New York stage to major league work at the top of the heap in Las Vegas, he still never forgets the Army veteran he knew in the years past. And he finally decides he must find him.

Ouch. Just. Ouch.

Comments

[beckyblack]

To channel Fr Dougal McGuire for a moment, I'm hugely confused.

[lexin.livejournal.com]

It's not John Simpson is it? It reads as if it could be him.

[erastes.livejournal.com]

Bad Lexin! No biscuit!

*giggling quietly*

[semioticwarrior.livejournal.com]

My eyes started to glaze over after the first sentence.

[erastes.livejournal.com]

It actually makes more sense to me this afternoon. What threw me was the em dash, I was expecting to read soemthing like:

Nor do the people he meets—particularly the Army veteran who has just returned from military service to the exclusive community north of New York where the teenager finds himself--expect him to be successful. Picky of me, I know!

[nagasvoice.livejournal.com]

What strikes me as curious about this is how much it sounds like self-insertion fan fiction of some of the less widely-accepted subgenres. It would not surprise me to learn the author is disgusted by the work of a publishing flack or an art director or something. However, most editors would do a better job of it. The other possibility is that a ghost-writer did parts or the whole of the thing inside the covers too. Is it remotely in the style of the putative writer?
Also, I'd be tempted to question the editorial taste that allowed that poor usage to escape into the wild.

[erastes.livejournal.com]

Having read one of his books, I doubt this is by him - probably something the publisher threw together to get it up on amazon and the like - I don't know.

[markprobst.livejournal.com]

At Cheyenne, whenever we put together a blurb, we always run it by the author for their approval, and usually the author will pick it apart, but in the end everyone is always happy with it. I realize that some of the bigger pubs don't give the authors any say in blurbs, cover art or anything.

And I know where this blurb comes from. All you have to do is take a unique line from the blurb, google it, and it will take you right to the source!

[erastes.livejournal.com]

of course, Google is very useful.

And I've never heard of White Lake Press, assume they aren't a subsidiary of Random House.

Luckily, big or small, I've always been involved thank the lord! - I assume this might be a hurried thing to get the blurb out there, as it were.

[markprobst.livejournal.com]

I guess since you referred to him as a well-known writer (I'd never heard of him) I assumed he was published by a mainstream press. There is no website for "White Lake Press" and google-ing it only brings up references to his books, so what does that tell you?