excerpts

An excerpt from my coming-soon release has finally been chosen, with a little help from a couple of sources in this process. :wave:

I don’t think I’ve ever asked for advice in the chosing of an excerpt before, but for some reason this one was tricky for me.  Or maybe I just decided to take it more seriously.  After all, it involves carving out a chunk of your prized manuscript to represent the whole, and often having people decide whether they might be interested in reading based on those few words.

It’s a fairly short book, so there was only so much to choose from.
It also seemed difficult to find one 1500-word passage that captured the “flavor” of the story.  It was hard to find something that seemed both sexy and sweet, silly and potentially serious, and hopefully intriguing but didn’t give too much of the plot away. :poke:

So naturally, it stirred my little gray cells to ask the question:

What do you look for when you read an excerpt from an author’s book?  What’s too long, too short?  Is there anything you occasionally find that turns you off, or a particular something you find lacking in some of them?