Back cover for A Body in the Sacristy

A few weeks back I posted my attempt at a cover for the first book I hope to self-publish. Here is my try at a back cover. It needs to include a blurb about the book and this generates a small problem. The novel is a mystery, in some ways a police procedural, but one with more focus on the community and the principal investigators family and friends that I expect in a standard police procedural. So in some ways more of a cozy mystery, but my central character is a police officer and I have no mystical elements. So I seem to be caught in between two sub-genres of mysteries.
Anyway, here is my back cover with an attempt at a blurb. Any thoughts would be appreciated.

Plodding to Publication

I've had greater success publishing short stories than novels. The answer is simple - deadlines.

There are generally submission windows for submission of short stories to anthologies, and short story contests invariably have a deadline. In 2017, I had good short story publishing success for a complete amateur, with three stories in Off Highway: Journeys of Nova Scotia Writers, an anthology published by the Evergreen Writers Group, and another in The Coldest December, an anthology of stories commemorating the one hundredth anniversary of the 1917 Halifax Explosion published by Quarter Castle Publishing. I had two flash fiction pieces published in On the Premises, a New England based literary ejournal, and one in The Stand. I also had one story that was runner up in a short story contest. Not bad for someone who is just dabbling in this creative writing business.

Novels are not as simple. There are seldom deadlines for submission, and endless opportunities and excuses for revising, editing, rewriting. I said in a blog post in October of last year that I needed to bite the bullet and publish my first oft-revised novel. Since then, I've done another rewrite. Once again, I find myself in need of something to push me toward publication.

This is step one: a cover for my new novel to be - a mystery set in an imaginary south shore Nova Scotia town. If I follow the front cover with a story synopsis, map of the town, back cover, and I don't know what else, I just might turn the manuscript that has been finished for some time into a book.

Or, I could go back and revise it all one more time.

Off Highway now available on Amazon
 

Off Highway: Journeys of Nova Scotia Writers is now available as paperback and e-book from Amazon.com and Amazon.ca. You should be able to find them by typing Off Highway Journeys of Nova Scotia Writers into the search bar in the books section of either website, or by clicking on these links:

https://www.amazon.ca/Off-Highway-Journeys-Scotia-Writers/dp/0993833810/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1509059328&sr=1-1

https://www.amazon.com/Off-Highway-Journeys-Scotia-Writers/dp/0993833810/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=

Off Highway: Journeys of Nova Scotia Writers is a 200-page trade paperback with 30 short stories and poems written by 13 members of the Evergreen Writers Group. It contains pieces about journeys real and imagined, many based on events in Nova Scotia. There are historical stories, personal memoirs, fictional stories sparked by personal experiences, and purely speculative ones.

Here is what Lesley Choyce, a prominent Nova Scotia novelist and poet, said about our book.

"This anthology of Nova Scotia authors is a collection of spirited prose and poetry written by a range of writers with diverse and intriguing backgrounds. Here you will find history, poetry, fiction and creative nonfiction by men and women who have been TV writers, animators, genealogists, teachers, playwrights, museum curators, scientists, and more. Many of these writers have travelled far and wide, but they have strong ties and fondness for this province."

(re)ⁿvisions, where n is an integer

My tendency to revise my manuscripts over and over again is out of control. For the novel I’m currently working on, n, in the mathematical expression in the header, has reached eleven. Eleven complete revisions of the manuscript with many more-focused rewrites of individual chapters.

I fear I am now making pointless changes to a manuscript that is as good as I can make it. Why am I doing this? Sadly, the answer is I am reluctant to take the next step.

It is time to bite the bullet! Should I submit it to a publisher or join the modern world and self-publish? Or should I just delete all the files from my computer and be done with the damn thing?

Tom Robson, a colleague in the Evergreen Writers Group (https://evergreenwritersgroup.wordpress.com) has just published his first novel. It’s a romance involving two forty something lovers and their spouses, ex-spouses and various offspring. If you are interested, his book can be found on Amazon by searching for Tom Robson or the title - “Wait and See”. I’m sure he made two or three extensive revisions, and I am starting on #12. I mean what’s with me?

New Evergreen Writers Group anthology

It's been three years since the Evergreen Writers Group published our first anthology, a collection of ghost stories that we titled Out of the Mist. It was an interesting and educational experience for all members that has covered our costs and is poised to make a modest profit.
We are now set to publish our second book. Off Highway: Journeys of Nova Scotia Writers is an eclectic collection of travel stories, some real, some imaginary. Also a few poems. Hopefully, readers will find them interesting.
Here is a picture of the front and back covers.

 It should be available soon on Amazon and other e-book sites. I'll post the links once we have them. In the meantime, we do have a facebook page for the new book. If interested, you should be able to find it by typing Off Highway into the facebook search bar.

Does anyone understand Amazon bestseller rankings? 
Out of the Mist, our (Evergreen Writers Group) anthology of ghost stories had spikes in its e-book bestseller ranking on Amazon.ca on May 5, May 31 when it reached #4 in the short story grouping, and June 8. We also had a spike in our paperback sales on May 22, but I think I understand that one.
During that period we had no e-book sales, nor any free book promotions or anything else that might have generated 'sales' and improved rankings without bringing in any revenue.
So how did we get to number four on the rankings for short stories ahead of Carol Shields, Madeleine Thein, Margaret Atwood and Alice Monroe? I know it was only a few days, but it felt good to be momentarily ahead of those well-known authors.
I just wish I knew how the rankings worked.

The Golden Age of Dystopias
So Brexit has happened. Now if the Donald can win the Presidential election in the US, he and Boris Johnson, two tow-headed examples of humanity's future, can unite to form the core of Oceania. Then if Vladimir Putin (another tow-head?) can use his military might to force the Europeans to replace Britain with Russia in the European Union, we will be two-thirds of the way to Nineteen Eighty-Four.
A glorious example, it will be, not of history repeating itself, but of the world striving to live up to the imaginings of authors of dystopian fiction. The golden age of dystopias could be upon us.