Author Ernie Lindsey from the bookscholarship.com discusses the book blurb for his upcoming novel, Going Shogun.
I’ve been writing for years, typically in a southern fiction voice, but the novel I’m working on now, that’s nearly finished, is completely different from anything I’ve ever written before. It’s something resembling a futuristic, dystopian, crime-fiction, murder/mystery heist, and describing it in under 250 words for a book blurb is posing a bit of a problem. The story itself is complicated, intricate, humorous, weirdly creative, peppered with pop culture and commentary on society, but what it really boils down to is two goofy waiters trying to steal some recipes from a restaurant.
Based on the blurb below, would you read this?
Going shogun: [goh-ing shoh-guhn] verb
1. The act of unleashing primal ferocity upon a person, place, or thing.
2. Releasing rage; controlled or uncontrolled
On paper, their plan was simple.
The year is 2??? and the Residents of what is left of the United States live within a divisive caste system, under the oppressive rule of a Big Brother entity called The Board. Their preservation of control is maintained by a nearly omniscient crime unit patrolling the streets. They’re called Board Agents, and everybody knows, you don’t go up against a Board Agent, and you don’t test the authority of The Board.
That is, everyone except two lovable losers called Forklift and Dawg, who wait tables at a restaurant called Wishful Thinking, where the recipes of their addictive, exotic dishes (like Chocolate Pumpkin Veal Mini Muffins and Sushi Yogurt) are so highly coveted that people are willing to break into the restaurant and risk imprisonment in their attempts to steal them.
Forklift and Dawg concoct a scheme to steal the recipes themselves and sell them on a highly illegal, black market website called RollerNinja.com, but when their plans go horribly wrong, they’re forced into an unwelcome adventure through the city’s seedy underground, down a rabbit hole full of lies and deceit, where they encounter an unforgettable cast of characters, and have to find the answer to the ultimate question, who’s really in Control?