I sometimes check the WordPress Daily Prompt for ideas, especially if I have gone four or five days without posting anything. Here is an interesting one from Friday – write a blurb for a book you might write. Well, it is too late for that so I thought I would mock up some blurbs for my present projects – one complete and two incomplete.

Dieu et Mon Droit

In the 25th century a new church has risen from the ashes of a nuclear war in the 20th century. They have outlawed most technology that separates man from god and taken us back to a medieval world. Catholics and Protestants are persecuted in equal measure and the new church The Knights of Christ uses an army to enforce its power over Europe.

Two men…
An Archbishop will find himself thrust into the centre of a bitter power struggle between those who seek only to live in peace and those who seek to seize more and more power. Archbishop Peter Scolatti finds a conflict between his position in the church and his conscience.

An Assassin – Victor Aquilino – is finally forced to come to terms with the choices he has made in life and begins to unravel the story of his past; he will come to question the role that the nefarious Cardinal Marco Tauris has had in his life, the only guardian he has ever known.

Against the backdrop of a country tearing itself in two, new futures are forged.

Alea Iacta Est

Two years after Dieu et mon Droit, Victor Aquilino is now in the employment of the British government as the chief spy to Queen Olesia. Despite the reforms of the church and the dissolution of the Old Synod, the former powers that be are desperate to re-accumulate the powers they lost.

Aquilino is slowly piecing together the story of his past – about his parents and the brother he never knew he had; and as the days pass he gets closer and closer to discovering why Marco Tauris had them killed and he has to accept some help from an insidious source to get there.

Out of the mountains of southern Spain comes word of a travelling preacher, a man it is said has healing powers. He speaks as disdainfully of the new church as he does the old. Is he a disenfranchised Bishop or Inquisitor looking to regain influence and seize power for himself? Is he yet another self-styled prophet or something else entirely? And can he really heal people?

Untitled Roman novel

Six former gladiators all recently freed are apprehended in Rome and taken immediately to see Emperor Vespasian. Expected to be bullied back into the arena to celebrate the grand opening of the Coliseum, they are surprised to be offered riches and generous benefits, including Citizenship for going on a secret mission for the Flavian dynasty.

They are to travel to the borders of the Roman Empire and beyond into deepest Germania to investigate the destruction of a secret military base.

When they arrive they find unimaginable destruction and the slaughter of an entire legion. The enemies of Rome could not have been responsible for the devastation they find, so who or what did it?

That was actually really rather hard, especially for the second book which is a sequel to the first and is only about 1/4 finished. How do you sum up your book succinctly in around 200 words without using clichés, to tell a story without giving away the story?

How do you go about writing a blurb and do you think you are particularly good at it?