Colin the Copywriter

Exo NetGalley helps publishers and authors promote digital review copies to book advocates and industry professionals. Publishers make digital review copies and audiobooks available for the NetGalley comm...

Audiobook edition of EXO by Colin Brush is available for request on @netgalley.bsky.social!

www.netgalley.com/catalog/book...
@colinthecopywriter.bsky.social

Due to be pub’d by @dreamscape-media.bsky.social on Nov. 18th; read by Gildart Jackson.

Shelfies #59: Colin Brush I cannot pick up a book, hoping to be enticed into reading it, without also critically examining the blurb.

Look! The smallest room in the house in our house turns out to be a library. Here I talk about one shelf in particular, some books on it and their blurbs, and how it all relates to writing and copywriting. Thanks, Jared and @lavietidhar.bsky.social
shelfies.beehiiv.com/p/shelfies-5...

(2/2) ... like protagonist Zinzi. But the blurb doesn't tell you this. Instead, it sneaks intriguing details in under the guise of a Chandleresque mystery – 'sloth on her back', 'Zoo City', 'animal companions'. It's immersive, dropping you into its world. Its mysteries await the reader's discovery.

Zoo City by Lauren Beukes and Lemur

Blurbs: Zinzi has a Sloth on her back, a dirty 419 scam habit and a talent for finding lost things. But when a little old lady turns up dead and the cops confiscate her last paycheque, she's forced to take on her least favourite kind of job - missing persons. Being hired by reclusive music producer Odi Huron to find a pop star should be her ticket out of Zoo City, the festering slum where the criminal underclass and their animal companions reside. Instead it catapults Zinzi deeper into the maw of a city twisted by crime and magic, where she'll be forced to confront the dark secrets of former lives - including her own.

Some blurbs hint (1/2) Originally published by @angryrobotbooks.bsky.social the @michaeljbooks.bsky.social edition of Lauren Beukes' @clarkeaward.bsky.social winning Zoo City features the original cover & blurb. The book's big weird involves criminals being magically attached to animal familiars ...

RBmedia | Exo Listen to the audiobook Exo, written by Colin Brush, narrated by Gildart Jackson.

Prick up your ears! Astounding news! My debut novel Exo will also be available as an audiobook from Dreamscape, narrated by the inestimable Gildart Jackson. @zenoagency.bsky.social @diversionbooks.bsky.social @awfulagent.bsky.social @rbmediaco.bsky.social
rbmediaglobal.com/audiobook/97...

making a living vs making a life or "can you earn money from your art?" (and is that even the right question?)

Not everyone can make a living doing the thing they love. But there are many ways of cleaving close to what it is you love and still making a living from it.
naomialderman.substack.com/p/the-best-a...

Sinister Skies Set the Scene for Derelict Buildings in Lee Madgwick's Surreal Paintings Beneath ominous skies and set within flat, green parkland, Lee Madgwick’s uncanny folly-like buildings strike an unsettling note.

Lonely buildings in an uncaring countryside.
www.thisiscolossal.com/2025/10/lee-...

Kate Summerscale's The Peepshow

Blurb: In 1953, the bodies of three young women are found by a tenant in the walls of a Notting Hill house. He tells the police that he chanced upon them while trying to put up a shelf for his transistor radio. As a series of further horrors are discovered, the eyes of a nation turn to 10 Rillington Place. In this riveting tale of violence, misogyny and tabloid frenzy, Kate Summerscale lifts the veil on what really happened inside the house - and suggests a new solution to one of the twentieth century's most notorious crimes.

Blurbs in the wild: Start small, end big. Kate Summerscale's The Peepshow blurb starts with a grisly find, details bringing it to life. Then it expands, the horrors within beguiling a nation. Finally, the last para offers a grand promise: closure. Show with little details. Tell with the big themes.

Annie Jacobsen's Nuclear War

Blurb: Nuclear war begins with a blip on a radar screen. This is a minute-by-minute account of what comes next. It has to be read to be believed.

Blurbs in the wild: Classic 3-line pitch blurb for Annie Jacobsen & @transworldbooks.bsky.social NW:
Nuclear war begins with a blip on a radar screen.
This is a minute-by-minute account of what comes next.
It has to be read to be believed.

Or:
What is it?
How does it work?
Why should you read it?

Booklist review of Exo by Colin Brush (me!).

'A twisty mystery, unusual science . . . Will find fans among both sf and mystery readers.'
Thank you, @ala-booklist.bsky.social & John Faria for the Exo review. Thanks as ever to:
@diversionbooks.bsky.social
@awfulagent.bsky.social
@zenoagency.bsky.social
www.booklistonline.com/products/981...

Blurbs in the office: (3/3) . . . and the promises of a better life and adventures to come.

Lastly, we can’t leave Lucy and the reader without throwing an element of doubt about the future, ending with an innocuous-seeming but crucial question . . .

Blurbs in the office: (2/3) . . . let Lucy have the first words, taking a quote from the book. This is, after all, who the reader will be spending nearly 500 pages with.

Once we establish the set up – jilted, refusal to mope – we then launch Lucy towards pastures new (the industrial north!) . . .

Penguin Michael Joseph Mermaid: Lucy Carmichael by Margarey Kennedy

Blurb: ‘People seem to get over things, don’t they? I don’t know how, but they do – ordinary people. I’m very ordinary, so I expect I shall do what they do.’ Lucy Carmichael is jilted at the altar. But no matter. Her loving and kind family never liked her explorer fiancé anyway. Instead of moping or falling into her supportive family’s arms, however, Lucy abandons their suburban home. Heading for the country, she takes up a teaching position in the industrial town of Ravonsbridge. There, she finds solace in her work, in her new (rather gossipy) colleagues – and rediscovers her sensible young self. But if Lucy has, despite everything, kept her head – where lies her heart?

Blurbs in the office (1/3): Penguin @michaeljbooks.bsky.social Mermaid Collection brings unjustly neglected 20th-century works back into print. Pitching Margaret Kennedy's Lucy Carmichael – the story of a jilted but sensible, happy-go-lucky woman’s attempts to remake her life – it felt right to . .

what we can learn from listening to Radio 4 Politics controls the spectacle by making itself the spectacle. We vote not for the winner, but for the tournament, the psychodrama of the struggle to win played out & analysed move by move in …

Reminds me of the necessity to pre-order @mjohnharrison.bsky.social new novel.

ambientehotel.wordpress.com/2025/10/14/w...

An M.C. Escher-Inspired Series by Parth Kothekar Distorts Perspectives With Single Sheets of Paper Harnessing the captivating power of pattern and mathematic principles, Parth Kothekar cuts meticulously deceptive works from single sheets of paper. The trippy pieces are inspired by the iconic optica...

3D in 2D.
www.thisiscolossal.com/2022/10/part...

(2/2) That doesn't stop the blurb deploying some stop-you-in-your-tracks phrasing: 'rituals of eating and slaughter', 'dazzlingly obtuse', 'brilliantly decorative'. Screw reader sensibilities. Take it, or leave it. It was a different age.

Isabel Colegate's The Shooting Party and toy guns

Blurb: A group of men and women gather at Sir Randolph Nettleby's estate for a shooting party. Opulent, adulterous, moving assuredly through the rituals of eating and slaughter, they are a dazzlingly obtuse and brilliantly decorative finale of an era.

(1/2) Back in the day they didn't butter you up. Both the line on the front and the blurb on the back of this old @penguinukbooks.bsky.social film tie-in of Isabel Colegate's The Shooting Party are straightforward to the point of bluntness.

Clearly a great pitch all round.

Blurbs in the wild (2/2): . . . the first paragraph of the blurb explains why maps are important. Many readers don't read the whole blurb, so for this to work the reader needs to engage fully with the blurb. It requires commitment.

But 'keep up!' it says, delights are to be found within.

A History of the World in 47 Borders by Jonn Elledge

Blurb: People have been drawing lines on maps for as long as there have been maps to draw on. Sometimes rooted in physical geography, sometimes entirely arbitrary, these lines might often have looked very different if a war or treaty or the decisions of a handful of tired Europeans had gone a different way. By telling the stories of these borders, we can learn a lot about how political identities are shaped, why the world looks the way it does - and about the scale of human folly. From the Roman attempts to define the boundaries of civilisation, to the secret British-French agreement to carve up the Ottoman Empire during the First World War, to the reason why landlocked Bolivia still maintains a navy, this is a fascinating, witty and surprising look at the history of the world told through its borders.

Blurbs in the wild (1/2): The didn't-know-you-were-interested-in-this blurb. Sometimes you have start from scratch. Before you can pitch the book to your reader you've got to pitch the subject. For @wildfirebooks.bsky.social and @jonnelledge.bsky.social A History of the World in 47 Borders . . .

Untamed Flora Subsumes Abandoned Greenhouses in Romain Veillon's 'Secret Gardens' In Romain Veillon's most recent body of work, "Secret Gardens," the enigmatic allure or abandoned greenhouses takes center stage.

Life in dead greenhouses.
www.thisiscolossal.com/2025/10/roma...

Sam Leith's The Haunted Wood

Back cover: A BOOK OF THE YEAR 2024 Sunday Times, Irish Times, Financial Times, Independent, New Statesman, Tablet and Waterstones Daily Mail, TLS, Economist, Prospect, Evening Standard, 'A delight' Julia Donaldson 'Gorgeous, loving, learned’ Hadley Freeman 'Moving and wistful' The Times 'Written with such love' Lucy Mangan 'Magisterial' New Statesman "A feast of a book’ Independent "Witty and warmhearted' Guardian ‘Marvellously charming' Literary Review ‘A joy’ Michael Rosen 'Gloriously entertaining' Tom Holland 'Fair-minded, terrific' Evening Standard 'Irrepressibly funny' Rowan Williams "This history of childhood reading is brilliantly constructed, well-researched and beautifully written - a wonderful book for anyone who believes in the magic of stories. The Haunted Wood reminds us that the books we read as children shaped us and shaped our societies." Elif Shafak

Blurbs in the wild: When you've got it, flaunt it. @oneworldbooks.bsky.social & Sam Leith's The Haunted Wood pitches its accolades: 1st: its 12 Book of the Year mentions. 2nd: 12 short quotes saying why it is good. 3rd: a long quote makes the reader a promise: if you like stories, you'll like this.

Episode 60: What We Read In September

Thank you, Book Boys (and Thomas Mann) for the yeah yeah yeahs for my novel Exo in your review in September's podcast. Apologies for the mathematics, hope that murder made up for it. The review starts at 1 hr 19 min 30 sec. Exo as tonic after Dr Faustus?
open.spotify.com/episode/2a1Z...

Energy Economies in Science Fiction By Jo Lindsay Walton ‘Embers’: Stranded Assets Wole Talabi’s short story ‘Embers’ (2024) explores the potential consequences of energy transition for a rural community in Nigeria,…

Fascinating essay on money=energy in science fiction. Lovely idea until you run into the problem of dealing with the economics of scarcity.
vector-bsfa.com/2025/10/03/e...

Blurbs in the wild (5/5): Three: It tells you what you're going to get, explaining how the book works. This isn't your bog-standard royal biography.

A book about the Queen, it seems to be arguing, is also a book about us. Maybe, this IS for everyone (British)?

Blurbs in the wild (4/5): Two: It deploys numerous inversions: optimist/pessimist; radiant/humdrum; public/private; amplifying the tensions we all feel when considering the subject. It reminds us that whoever you are, you had some feelings for the subject (if you're British, obvs).

Blurbs in the wild (3/5): Second, we have the blurb, which is a masterwork. It does three things brilliantly.

One: It tells you why the subject matters, and why it will matter to the reader, whoever you are (if your British).

Blurbs in the wild (2/5): This is despite the fact that royal books have a very Marmite audience: you either love 'em, or wouldn't touch one with a silver sceptre.
First, we have it's Book o/t Year recommendations, spread right across the other 4th estate's political affiliations. Everyone loves it.

Craig Brown's A Voyage Around the Queen

Blurb: Queen Elizabeth II was famous for longer than anyone who has ever lived. When people spoke of her, they spoke of themselves; when they dreamed of her, they dreamed of themselves. To the optimist, she seemed an optimist; to the pessimist, a pessimist; to the awestruck, radiant; and to the cynical, humdrum. Though by nature reserved and unassuming, her presence could fill presidents and rock stars with terror. For close to a century, she inhabited the psyche of a nation. Combining memoir, essays, cultural history, travels, dream diaries and parody, A Voyage Around the Queen presents a kaleidoscopic portrait of this most public yet private of sovereigns.

Blurbs in the wild (1/5): It is a publishing cliche that 'this book is for everyone.' When an editor makes such a claim the comms team groans: they hear 'a book for no one.' But @4thestatebooks.bsky.social & Craig Brown's A Voyage Round the Queen is determined to fly the 'for everyone' flag . . .

Craig & Karl's 'Mateys' Bring Vibrancy and Joy to Bridges in Brisbane and Beyond Craig & Karl are known for their vivid participatory projects, which range from mini-golf courses to playgrounds to murals.

We need more colour.
www.thisiscolossal.com/2025/10/crai...