So here’s what everyone said about Spider’s Bite, along with the final version of the cover:

Nalini Singh: “Spider’s Bite is a raw, gritty and compelling walk on the wild side, one that had me hooked from the first page. Jennifer Estep has created a fascinating heroine in the morally ambiguous Gin Blanco — I can’t wait to read the next chapter of Gin’s story.”

Lisa Shearin: “A sexy and edgy thriller that keeps you turning the pages. In Spider’s Bite, Jennifer Estep turns up the heat and suspense with Gin Blanco, an assassin whose wit is as sharp as her silverstone knives. When Gin is double-crossed, framed, and her handler murdered, she’ll leave no stone unturned and no enemy breathing in her quest for revenge. Spider’s Bite leaves you dying for more.”

Lilith Saintcrow: “Watch out world, here comes Gin Blanco. Funny, smart, and dead sexy.”

Jackie Kessler: “I love rooting for the bad guy — especially when she’s also the heroine.
Spider’s Bite is a sizzling combination of mystery, magic, and murder. Kudos to Jennifer Estep!”

Adrian Phoenix: “Jennifer Estep is a dark, lyrical, and fresh voice in urban fantasy. Brimming with high octane-fueled action, labyrinthine conspiracies, and characters who will steal your heart, Spider’s Bite is an original, fast-paced, tense, and sexy read. Gin is an assassin to die for.”

As you can see, Nalini’s blurb is on the cover. All the blurbs are so great that I wish we could put them all the cover. But alas, that is not how it works in the book business.

So what happens to the other blurbs? Well, I imagine that they’ll get used in other places, like on the back cover and in the pages in the front of the book where the author’s other titles/reviews/accolades are listed. And, of course, in Pocket’s various marketing materials for the books and in mine too — on my bookmarks, flyers, Web site, etc. Honestly, I probably won’t know exactly how all the blurbs are used until I get my author copies of Spider’s Bite.

Still, I just want to take a moment to say thanks to everyone who read the book and gave me a blurb. I really do appreciate it. You guys rock!

I also want to give a shout-out to artist Tony Mauro, who designed the truly awesome cover for Spider’s Bite — and the one for Web of Lies that is just as good. Hopefully, I’ll be able to share that one soon.

In the meantime, I’m going to go bask in the glow of my blurb goodness. 😉

Okay, I finally got at the final cover for Spider’s Bite from my editor, which means that I can continue my miniseries on cover blurbs. In my last post, I talked about sending out my cover blurb package to authors asking them to read Spider’s Bite. Now, I want to talk about the folks who were kind enough to take the time to read and blurb the book. Here they are (in no particular order):

Nalini Singh: Nalini is the New York Times best-selling author of the paranormal romance Psy-Changeling series, as well as the urban fantasy Guild Hunters series. Her latest Psy-Changeling book, Blaze of Memory, comes out this week. Nalini is a Berkley author, and I first met her at one of the Berkley author signings at RWA a few years back. We had run into each other at various conferences since then and e-mailed a few times about various things. Nalini was also nice enough to send me some magazines when Hot Mama was excerpted in the Australian version of Cosmo a while back. Nalini does really cool world building in her books and writes complicated, interesting characters, so I thought she would be a great blurber for Spider’s Bite.

Lisa Shearin: Lisa is the national best-selling author of the fantasy adventure Raine Benares series, which includes Magic Lost, Trouble Found. Now, before I asked her for a blurb, I had never met Lisa at a conference, never e-mailed her, nothing. But I saw a post about her on her agent, Kristin Nelson’s blog, and I thought her books sounded really cool. (Seriously, how often do you see a first-person female heroine in epic fantasy?) So I checked out her books. I really liked the fact that she wrote such a strong, but fun female character in Raine, so I e-mailed her about blurbing. I have to say that I was surprised (and thrilled) when she said yes.

Lilith Saintcrow: Lilith is the author of several urban fantasy and other series, including the Dante Valentine series and the Jill Kismet series. I had read the first few books in the Dante series, including Working for the Devil, and enjoyed them. A while back, I had also written some brief review blurbs on the books for my newspaper and had e-mailed the pages to Lilith. When I e-mailed her asking for a blurb, she remembered my reviews, which was really cool. Lilith also writes really strong female characters and the world building in her Dante Valentine series is an interesting mix of sci-fi and fantasy.

Jackie Kessler: Jackie is the author of the Hell on Earth and Icarus Project series (with Caitlin Kittredge). The Icarus series includes Black and White, which is about superheroes, a subject near and dear to my heart. I met Jackie at RT last year in Pittsburgh, and we’ve run into each other at various conferences since them. Jackie was also nice enough to interview me for her Cat and Muse blog, and we’ve e-mailed about various book stuff. Jackie writes a really zany, fun character in Jezebel in her Hell on Earth series, along with a great bad boy in Daunuan.

Adrian Phoenix: Adrian is the author of the urban fantasy The Maker’s Song series, which includes A Rush of Wings. Think FBI agents, vampires, and more in the steamy locale of New Orleans. Like me, Adrian is another Pocket Books author, and my editor asked her about blurbing Spider’s Bite, which she graciously agreed to do. (It’s very common for editors to ask other authors at their houses for blurbs). I’d heard a lot of good things about Adrian’s books, so I was really excited that she was reading my book.

(I was excited that all the blurbers were reading my book — and a little nervous too. You always want other folks to like your work).

So to sum up, I had previously met or e-mailed Nalini, Lilith, and Jackie before asking them for blurbs. So I guess the moral of the story is that it really does help to network with other authors.

But, on the flip side, I had never met or e-mailed Lisa or Adrian before, so I guess that moral is that it never hurts to ask another author for a blurb (whether it’s you or your agent/editor). The worse she can do is say no.

As for why I (and by extension my agent/editor) picked these authors, they all really have two things in common — really strong female characters and cool world building. We also tried to get folks in a variety of genres, in this case paranormal romance, urban fantasy, and epic fantasy.

Up next: What the blurbers said about Spider’s Bite. And the cover!

So in my last post, I talked about what cover blurbs are. Today, I thought I would talk a little more about how I went getting my blurbs and some of the problems that I ran into.

So once I compiled my list of potential cover blurb authors, I sent it to my editor and agent to get their thoughts. They came back with some suggestions and authors of their own. Once that was done, I basically sat down and thought about all the authors that I had connections with and went from there — who I thought I could realistically get a blurb from.

And then, I put together a package, just like aspiring writers do when they’re sending their stuff out to editors and agents. Basically, my package was the first chapter of Spider’s Bite, the preliminary cover art, a flyer that I designed about the Elemental Assassin series (shown here), and a cover letter asking the author for a blurb and how I thought his/her books were similar to mine.

And then, I sent them out via e-mail. Not only did I target authors that I had a connection with, but I also sent the package to what I dubbed my “dream blurbers” — best-selling authors that probably get a hundred blurb requests a year. I figured why not? I might get lucky.

Most folks were great, agreeing to read the book. A couple of authors literally got back to me within a few hours, which was awesome (Thanks, Lisa and Jackie!). A few politely declined, which was perfectly fine and somewhat expected. I know how busy other authors are writing their own books.

But some of them never got back to me at all.

Yep, that’s right. Some authors I contacted about blurbs didn’t even send me back a “Sorry, no thanks” e-mail. Now, I know some of these authors get hundreds of e-mails a week, and I probably got lost in the shuffle. But in some cases, I e-mailed the author’s agent — and some of them never got back to me. (And no, I’m not going to name names).

Now, politely telling me no for whatever reason is fine, but I think not responding at all is a wee bit rude. Yeah, I know agents get even more e-mail than authors do. But it was a professional request sent in (what I think was) a professional manner. You should at least e-mail me back and say no, so I can move on to the next person. Especially since the author is paying the agent that 15 percent to handle things like this in the first place.

So all you aspiring writers out there, don’t feel bad if an agent or editor never gets back to you about a submission. Because it happens to published authors too.

But anyway, I sent my package out and got some wonderful yeses from other authors. Then, of course, I had to send them the book and wait for them to read and blurb it. Which was probably the hardest part for me. I am so not good at waiting. 😉

The blurbs started trickling in the last two weeks, and I’ve really been thrilled with what everyone has had to say about Spider’s Bite. I wish we could put all the quotes on the cover.

So who are my blurbers? I think that’ll be the next post. (I’m hoping to get the final, final cover art to post with that blog by the end of the week. We shall see …)