More Than I Needed to Know

by Julie Coulter Bellon

My husband and I were sitting at a dinner table with another couple and we had the fresh garden salad in front of us, with cucumbers in it. Well, one of the dinner guests started talking about how the cucumbers reminded her of when she was first pregnant. Apparently, she had some cucumbers from her garden marinating in vinegar and water. When she ate one, she felt nauseated, and suddenly threw up so hard that cucumber chunks went through her nose and she smelled vinegar for a week. The rest of us were looking down at our now unappetizing salad, and my thought was, "that was waaay too much information."

That's sort of how it is when you're trying to explain what your book is about or even when you're writing the back text for your book. You don't want people to lose interest in your book or look at it in an unappetizing way because you've spilled way too much information. You want to balance that fine line and entice the reader to read your book and then love it so much they'll recommend it to others. No one will recommend a garden salad with cucumbers to someone else when they have the visual picture of cucumber chunks coming out of a woman's nose---unless you're a young boy and find that sort of thing awesome. I still think of the cucumber story every time I see cucumbers in a salad. I wish the woman at the dinner table could have just said that cucumbers reminded her of her morning sickness instead of describing chunks coming out of her nose. It was very memorable, just not in a good way---and you definitely want your book to be memorable in a good way.

A lot of people have been asking me what my new book is about and I've been playing around with different answers and possible back text. (Side note: Some publishing houses ask the author to write the back text and other publishers write it themselves with input from the author.) My newest book is an international romantic suspense novel, set in Iraq and Utah. Now comes the hard part, explaining the basic premise without giving away too much. So this is what I've come up with so far.

Dr. Brandon Shepherd and his colleague, Dr. Rachel Fielding, are Army doctors, who serve in a small outpost along the Syrian border near al-Qaim, Iraq. While trying to rescue a wounded soldier trapped in a firefight, they are kidnapped by terrorists who ask them to do something that no patriotic American would ever want to do. Meanwhile, back in the United States, Brandon's sister Kristen, a professional political campaign manager, has called off her wedding and agreed to head up the campaign for the next Utah governor. However, when Kristen sees her captive brother on television, she uses every political connection she has to win his freedom. Amid danger and intrigue, faith and prayer, this book is an exciting international romance that brings close to home the world we live in today.

So I've tried to bring forward the important details, introduce the main characters and plot, while at the same time making you want to read the rest of the book. It still needs some work, and could possibly use a little more information, but at least there's no cucumber chunks in sight.