Road Trip Wednesday is a ‘Blog Carnival, where YA Highway’s contributors post a weekly writing- or reading-related question and answer it on their blogs. You can hop from destination to destination and get everybody’s unique take on the topic.

This week’s topic: Blurb it! Write a blurb for your favorite book or your own work.

This is way hard! Maybe because I feel like I’m totally tooting my own horn. But if I can’t say wonderful things about my story, then why would anyone else bother? Right? So, I’m opting to share the blurb from the story I’m currently querying, Where Poppies Bloom. I came up with a one-line pitch before ever I began to write the story, which turned out to be quite helpful in keeping myself on track while writing, and while crafting my blurb. Here’s the original one-line pitch:

 A guilt-ridden girl chooses between life with the golden boy who dulls her pain, or eternal escape with the ghost who holds secrets of his own.

From there, I expanded to a three-line pitch, which I’m also going to use as my blurb. My CPs helped a lot here. I tend to err on the wordy side, and so many aspects of the story felt important enough to include. It was difficult to condense, but eventually we came up with this:

Drowning in guilt that stems from her younger sister’s tragic death, seventeen-year-old Callie Ryan travels to the Oregon coast to spend the summer with her aunt. Cheerful yard boy, Tucker Morgan, manages to resurrect a glimmer of the girl Callie used to be, but she also finds unlikely companionship in mysterious Nathan Stewart, the dark and ethereal ghost bound to her aunt’s house. When Callie discovers a chilling, decades-old connection between Tucker and Nathan, she must choose between life with the golden boy who dulls her pain, and eternal escape with the ghost who may harbor sinister motivations.

I spent forever working on my full query blurb. My CPs were extremely helpful with this phase as well, and I revised those two little paragraphs more times than I care to recall. I’ve had some decent success with my query, and I’m currently waiting to hear back on several requests. If you’re curious about my query blurb, you can find it in the sidebar.

As far as a cover blurb? One word:

“Unput-downable!”

Don’t forget to stop by YA Highway to check out all the other fabulous blurbs.