I’ve been publishing books for a long time, into the grisly old age of my late seventies,  My last four novels, crossing the threshold of challenging storytelling, I could never have imagined while writing books in my thirties or forties.


I care for, sometimes love, book jackets.  I am drawn to their imaginative art work—a dynamic mirror of some kind of collective storytelling consciousness.  But what about all those large-font  sentences flying over the front and back covers, insisting that I might really like this book?   Over the decades, I honestly lose track of what is written, and which famous people wrote them. They often seem interchangeable, and sometimes a string of cliches. Even the most accurate accolades merge into sensory overload.


I’ve gone blurbless for my new novel, Ghost With Two Hearts. It’s  about a troubled, young American coder seeking out ancient Japanese spirits for guidance, with too much at stake even for him to understand at first. 


How do I convey all this on a book jacket? I’m not sure, but I’m willing to experiment.  For Ghost, I  chose two images, created by two different artists, one for the front cover and one for the back cover.  I added a 100 word excerpt from the novel at the bottom of the back cover which tells a reader a lot more, I hope, than would the most well-intended blurbs, especially if they carry on into a book’s interior.  


Save your reading time for the story you just spent your money on, I would like to tell people. Whether you like the story or not, you can always write a review.