The blurb is an author’s biggest enemy. Well, it is mine, anyway. In case you’re not sure what I’m talking about: a blurb is the brief summary of a book that usually gets printed on its back cover. It’s those couple of sentences which decide whether people will buy the book or move on. The blurb decides over life and death.
This said, put yourself in my shoes:
There I am, after a long and arduous process of creating, plotting, writing, and editing. The epitome of this process: a 104 thousand word œuvre. Now boil this down to a mere 250 words. But remember, it’s got to raise the reader’s heart rate and bring the color of excitement to his cheeks: it has to be unputdownable.
Getting the round peg into the square hole is child’s play in comparison. I fretted over every word in the manuscript, whittling and weighing, chipping and molding. If there were a single superfluous syllable in my manuscript, I would have deleted it already. To squeeze 104-thousand drops of blood, sweat, and tears into tiny box of a mere 250 words is a herculean task.
I’m not cut out for this. I hold the speed world record in gyroplanes, I play a mean jazz saxophone, and I can iron a shirt with my own hands. But writing a blurb makes my palms go all sweaty.
Alright, enough whining already! Here is the blurb to THE PI EFFECT.
Most people will remember international Pi Day, March 14, 2025, as the day the Craze ended. Though only a handful of people will ever know that the very fabric of space and time came within a hair’s breadth of ripping apart.
The culprit was, of course, the number pi.
Again, for most people, 3.14 is a good enough approximation of pi. Except when you are a member of the Church of One, a peculiar clerical group. Or your name is Grayson Louderman, a quantum physics and computer prodigy. Then, the infinite number pi encapsulates something of utmost importance. To the former, pi is the name of God and a means to attain ultimate power. To Grayson, pi is at the heart of an arcane quantum effect that threatens to upend space and time. That is, if the Church of One isn’t stopped calculating pi to unimaginable precision using their latest generation quantum computer.
Grayson was well on his way to save the world. Really. Had things not turned out quite differently.
Before all went to hell, he managed to pass the torch to Liz, a Ph.D. student of neuroscience, and Raoul, a catholic seminarian and psychology major. What, to the unlikely couple, seemed like a fun quest initially, turns into a life-threatening mission.
Dr. Chris Kurz 