AKA – Never buy an ebook unless you’ve at least read a blurb
AKA – I love the old crap in my writing folder

I was going to be lazy with my post today and just pull some super-juicy, everyone-will-love-it-or-at-least-prentend-to snippet from a file in my writing folder on my jump drive. In order to do this, I had to start reading through all of the files. Or at least those whose titles caught my attention.

Which, by the way, is something I’ve discovered is far more important than I realized before. (wow, that was wordy). Last night I was looking for something new to read in the Kindle store. Price was the first factor, because I was feeling cheap, but if the price was okay, I realized I was skipping it if the title didn’t catch my attention. Cover played a part, too, but it was the third factor in whether or not I even looked at the description.

The sucky thing is, if I made it to the description stage in the browsing process, more than half the books didn’t have descriptions. I had to download samples just to see what it was about. I downloaded one sample with a very obvious Facebook reference for a title. I’m all about the impact social media has on society, so I decided to give it a look, even though there was no description.

And about two minutes later was when I learned how to remove books from my kindle app.

Here’s the thing. The voice was okay. It was a little loose. It was a little…

Well…the reason I stopped reading through my old stories is because I found the below. And it’s the same reason I stopped reading the sample last night:

The sun beat down mercilessly on the trampled, faded, green grass of the college campus. Students milled about listlessly, most seeking refuge in the shade of the older trees. Three such friends sat under such plant, looking from a distance like they were engrossed in a very serious conversation.

I won’t subject you to more. The next paragraph was a blog of text about what the girl looked like. And then some vague references to people whose names I hadn’t handed out yet, and while I really liked the dialogue (because I’m vain and usually like my dialogue), the rest of it made me wince, and possibly made me a little ill.

But, because I amuse myself, I think a good tagline would be “three such friends sat under such a plant”, because it’s so bad it’s awesome. Right? Maybe?

The good news is, I uncovered three or four or five iterations of a story that are so different from each other that they’re all their own stories. Apparently I even started a YA dystopian novel at some point, though at the time I wouldn’t have known to call it that. If I were to blurb it off the top of my head…

In a world where gang-wars and riots are the only law, Chloe and her friends are stuggling to stay alive and still graduate high school. When Chloe’s mother starts predicting her daughter’s ascension, and hinting that the irritating, cute guy in her philosophy class will be involved, things go from dangerous to downright embarassing.

Okay, that’s a little weak. But I only just wrote it, so I beg forgiveness on that front. Point is, it might be fun to pick up some of these stories again in the future and see where they go.