Thursday 5 May 2011

SHOUTLINES

HarperCollins in America are obviously busy with designing the US cover of The Demi-Monde: Winter because they asked me if I had any ideas regarding ‘reading lines’ which are the teaser lines which go under the titles of books (check out the 'The Future is Bones and Ruins' tag on the cover of Patrick Lee’s book). I think they’re called ‘shoutlines’ in the UK.


Anyway (with the help of Nigel) this is what I came up with:

• Evil re-Incarnate (my favourite)

• Past Present: Future ImPerfect (I quite like this too).

• Enter a world where nothing is as it was … or as it will be.

• Abandon hope all ye who enter here (terrible).

• Perversity, thy name is the Demi-Monde (even more terrible).

• $5 million for her life … but how much for her soul.

• Where reality has never been more real … or more dangerous.

• The weight of evidence for an extraordinary claim must be proportionate to its strangeness (a quote from Laplace)

• Evil is a never just a game.

• Evil plays to win.

• Evil never obeys the rules.

• Virtual unReality.

• Virtual Evil.

• History has come back to haunt us.

• History takes its revenge.

• Our past has come back to haunt us.

• Our past takes its revenge.

• It’s impossible to contain evil.

• You can imagine evil but you can’t contain it.

• A game with rules and without conscience.

• Virtually evil.

• In the Demi-Monde trust nobody … not even yourself.

• Survival is never just a game.

• unReal Estate

Nigel’s suggestions were:

• The past couldn't be more intense... the future more imperfect.

• Evil unbound

• Virtually real. Practically inescapable. Totally evil.

• Get with the Program.

• Persecution, Terror, Genocide... we've got an app for that (this is too close to the apple ads, but I'm sure you could get something good out of that)

• It's not quite as simple as that...

• Now, that's strange

• Two young girls and one world war.

• A future, haunted by the past

• A whole world of pain.

• To lose one girl, Mr President, may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness (not really).

• NOW your fucked! (not really, again)

• Games without frontiers. It's a knockout. (not really, again, sorry)

• "Occult Stalinist Nazi Vampires versus the Lesbian Supremacists." (really)

It’ll be interesting to see what HC finally decide but it was a fun exercise anyway.

1 comment:

  1. HC seem to prefer the more descriptive ones so the front runners appear to be:

    You can imagine evil but you can’t contain it.

    Enter a world where nothing is as it was … or as it will be.

    Where virtual reality has never been more real … or more dangerous.

    In the Demi-Monde trust nobody … not even yourself.

    I think they're all good ... but then again HC might go with one of their own. I'm relax: HC have been terrifically professional thus far so I think the book is in safe hands.

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