Writing Short Is Hard...

Sheila needed a quick bit of catalogue copy for A MAGIC OF NIGHTFALL for Penguin, and since she hasn't yet read the manuscript (which is almost done), she asked me to write it for her.

Writing a short paragraph describing a book that 175,000 words long is... tough. I hate doing that. I'm a novelist. I write long... and I don't write copy -- which is another art all in itself.

But: after a struggle, I got something together for her. Here it is (no real spoilers here, I don't think, but if you don't want to take a chance, avert your eyes now...):

It's now twenty-five years after the events of A MAGIC OF TWILIGHT. A boy king--Audric, the grandson of the legendary Kraljica Marguerite--rules Nessantico under the tutelage of Sergei ca’Rudka, but the boy is ill and there are those who are waiting impatiently for the Sun Throne to become vacant again. The continent-spanning empire of the Holdings has broken in half, with Firenzcia and neighboring countries to the east creating a rival alliance. The Concénzia Faith has also been sundered, with Archigos Ana ca’Seranta ruling in Nessantico while another in Brezno claims the same title. In Firenzcia, Allesandra ca’Vörl plots against the Holdings, and for Semini ca’Cellibrecca, the Archigos of Brezno, the acceptance of the Numetodo heretics in the Holdings makes him quake with fury. In the far west, there is war with the Tehuantin, the people of the Hellins, and that war does not go well. In Nessantico herself, in the warrens of Oldtown, agents of the Tehuantin are watching...

And quickly, with a roar of flame and unexpected death, great and terrible events are set in motion, and Nessantico must face a threat unlike any other in its long, illustrious history: a threat that will take it to the knife-edge of destruction.

I think it mostly proves that I shouldn't be a writer of advertising copy...