One for Sorrow

Posted on by scott

I hope you’re having a good Barzak Day!

If you haven’t heard of Barzak Day, don’t feel bad. This is the first Barzak Day ever, because Chris Barzak’s very first novel is arriving in bookstores right now . . .

Beautiful cover, beautiful book. It was sent to me last year to blurb. Now, I’ve only written a few blurbs in my career (five or six), because I’m a slow reader and want to spend my blurbs wisely. But after reading One for Sorrow, I knew it was time to peel off another one from my tightly rubber-banded roll. Here it is:

“An honest and uncanny ride through the shadows between grief and acceptance. This is how real magic works.”
-Scott Westerfeld

Blurbs are hard to write. Distilling a whole novel into a few words, while trying to sell something to someone standing in a bookstore, is no easy task. But this felt like the right blurb for this novel. One for Sorrow is about that weird intersection between grief and magic, how sadness can bubble up and move the world in paranormal directions.

One thing that my blurb doesn’t convey is that this book is also scary, in a very cool way. Not the kind of scary where you’re nervous about a monster under your bed. More like the kind where you’re nervous that there might be, um, another universe under your bed. One where the rules are skewed and different and a little bit wrong, but that you’d probably crawl on into if you glimpsed it, just out of curiosity.

It’s that kind of book.

A quick word of warning: this book is also probably best for 14 and up. There are some fairly steamy scenes.

You can look up more details or buy it here.

42 thoughts on “One for Sorrow”

  4. WOW!! LOOKS FWASEOME. Wow, I think I spelled that wrong. I can’t wait to read it!!

    Kadie-Wa Only 35 days until extras!! Or
    1 month 4 days or
    3,024,000 seconds or
    50,400 minutes or
    840 hours or
    5 weeks

    Wow, really not that long of a wait!

  5. Sounds good, Scott. Ill keep my eyes peeled for it.

    People should pay you for talking about their books in your blog. I mean about a hundred more or less people read your post everyday. Most of the people are bound to find which ever book your talking about interesting because of the genre of your books. Maybe only 15 of the 75 people buy the book. the other people will request libaries to order them and borrow the book from friends. Therefore the author of the book has had their fame increased and same with their profit.

  7. If thats the deal, Kadie, maybe Scott doesnt need to get payed and its just a cycle of one author helping another author. Round and round it goes.

  12. Sooo, the book is out today and it’s what? semi-fantasy, the cover looks interesting and I love those books where there might be a universe under your bed! Which is why I’d rather have invisibility than time travel.

  15. ooo sounds very goood

    I’m going to share with all of you how stupid I am now. Where i am it’s still August 28th and when i saw that that was posted Aug 29 i started gettin all confused and freaking out because my friend birthday is the 30th and i need a present. of course i reilizied there are things called time differences and calmed down.

  16. =D Sounds like a book for me, i’ll have to go check it out. maybe even buy it.

    I just bought the whole midnighters series b/c i’m tired of them being checked out at the library. I was going to wait for the new covers but you know, I didn’t want to wait long.

    You should really recomend books more often, I like reading books people suggest.

  17. totally gonna read it! just ordered it. yesterday i went to Scholastic warehouse and bought 39 books! (lucky number) its gonna be a while before i need to check out a book from the library!

  19. did nobody miss me? llolol, looks fool Scott, i’ll check it out. thanks much. i’ve been readin ur blogs, jst havnt had the time (nor the patience) to write a comment. i’ve had so much to do latly, i’ve had skool, swimming, chorus, reading (=p) which btw vampire lovers, 13 Bullets is an amazin book, along w/ Marked, Moon Called, Blue Bloods, and much more. lol. well, i’ll try postin comments more often. hope u guys still remember mmee

  22. that looks so good! ^_^

    oh, so you’re (Scott) a slow reader? *phew* i’m a slow reader, too. i was a bit worried that something was wrong, being a slow reader and a soon-to-be author (i hope!). lol.

    ~nya!

  23. Really? A blurb is that hard to write. I think it would be fun to be just a blurb writer. It involes reading and advertising. Stuff I love.

  25. sounds like another book to add to mty ever growing list… and im so getting a shirt when i well hav money for it (he he)

    scott: havent read other comments in a while so excuse me for bugging but we have like a month to get the contest started!!! then extras will be out! Hurry with the plan making there are a lot of ideas in the comments!!!

  28. that books sound intrasting i’ll look for it at the library!!! Still cant wait for the book EXTRAS !!!!

  29. You know 13 Bullets: A vampire tale, by David Wellington? I tried reading that. You didn’t mention it was also appropriate for 14 years and up, or at least very mature kids who love blood and gore and a fair amount of cussing, and aren’t too religious to mind lesbianism. I’m all of the above, except I didn’t like the blood and gore too much. I suppose it’s my fault: I should have realized that a hunting-down-vampires book should be full of blood. And gore.

  30. hm. now i need to read this, and the book thief.
    (scott, you must be bored. why are you posting so much?)

  31. i want to read it now!!! i’m gonna request it from my library…but i’ll probably have to wait like a month till they have it.

    hey, haddy-la and lizzy-wa, what shirts did you get?

    random thought: whoa, there’s like some bird freaking out right outside my window. it just keeps chirpingandchirpingandchirping and it’s been going on for at least three minutes.

  32. Huh. Maybe it’s just me, then. I never read the blurbs on books. In fact, the more blurbs I see on a book, the less likely I am to want to read it. Certain kinds of blurbs (“The next (insert author name here)!”) actually make me so angry that I immediately put the book down without another glance (because these sorts of blurbs tend to indicate yet another mediocre item in the genre).

    I’ve never cared what others think of a book; I’d much rather read it and find out for myself, thank you very much. The recent trend of putting increasingly more blurbs on books (so many that a great number of books I’ve come across lately don’t even have their book description on the cover or even inside) frustrates me. I feel like the industry thinks I can’t figure out a good book for myself, that someone else has to tell me it’s good or I won’t read it (sometimes someone else does have to tell me, but that someone is a friend whose opinion I trust, not another author I’ve never met).

    Still. Your description (not your blurb) of this book makes me want to see it. Glad I saw this post before I accidentally picked up the book and read the blurbs. 😀

  33. ya know my friend once wrote a story in which there WAS a whole other universe under the main characters bed. we were supposed to write a story based off the ol’ “monster under the bed” thing. and when the character crawled under her bed she was teleported to another world…. but i digress. that book sounds pretty awesome.
    And what a beautiful blurb! very deep. 😉

  40. no. that doesnt sound two Kool. it should be declared a world wide holiday called…

    Druuuuummmmmmrooooollllll…

    EXTRAS!

    a totally hypochondriac holiday celebrating Ugly Minds. and US of course. celebrating free speach and thought. celebrating differences and uglylinesslinessness. celebrating Scott-la and Tally-wa and Zane-la and Shay-la and Lizzy-wa(me) and Kadie-wa and Hannah-wa and Bri-la and Amy-la and Jess-la and Razz-wa and kheidi-la and Jess-la and Talor-wa and Haddy-wa and Addy-wa and Hilary-wa and everybody else! and MOST IMPORTANTLY celebrating the totally Unconquerable Awesomenessly Hypochondraic Overzealously Awesomenessla of UGLIES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

    thank you.

    -Lizzy-wa OUT! 😛

  41. oops! after that totally awesome speech of mine, i reread it and realized that i said Jess-la twice! oh well. it still should be a holiday. well im declaring it a holiday. FOREVER!!!!!

    -Lizzy-wa OUT! 😛

  42. Well i followed your advice, and i’m reading One for Sorrow, almost finished actually. And it’s grzeat really. Makes me really think of The Catcher in the Rye, with ghosts. Thanks for the advice;o)

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