Blurb 100It’s a safe bet that writing the blurb  for a new book wouldn’t make any author’s top ten list of joyously anticipated tasks. And yet there it is, as necessary as it is tedious, and not to be neglected before the book itself is presented to its hoped for audience. I’ve just written the blurb for my new book, and I’d love to know whether your think it does what it’s supposed to do.

That purpose, of course, is to provide an incentive to people to actually read the book. The same is true for the brief bio I’ve also prepared for the back of the book, since anyone can find out as much as they want about an author today simply by going on-line.

The book is called The Lafayette Campaign, a Tale of Deception and Elections. I won’t tell you any more than that for now, because the test of a good blurb is whether it would lure you in all by itself.

So without further ado, here are the current drafts of my blurb and bio. Would they dispose you to buy my book? Why not? Any and all suggestions for improvement would be gratefully received.

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America is rushing headlong into an election year and all of the scheming and mud-slinging that go along with one. Candidates are jumping into the race like jack rabbits, from former Wisconsin Dairy Queen Roxanne Rollins to Texas televangelist Randall Wellhead. Anyone would think the doors of some political Bedlam had been thrown open, letting a mob of raving lunatics loose onto the primary trail. That’s what cybersecurity super sleuth Frank Adversego is thinking just before his own course veers wildly out of control. What follows is a fast-paced, suspense-filled race to find out who’s trying to hack a presidential election and to stop them before they do.

It all begins innocently enough, when Adversego picks up an attractive but maddening young French hitchhiker in the middle of the desert. Soon he’s enlisted by a government agency without a name to find out who is manipulating poll results, and the plots begin to multiply as competing teams of hackers scramble for supremacy and the election hangs in the balance. Adversego is assisted by some familiar faces from The Alexandria Project as well as a cast of fascinating new characters, including a scheming Native American casino manager, a scrum of conservative primary contenders too incredible to be believed anywhere outside of a real American election, and a former Secretary of Defense unwilling to leave anything to chance this time around.

The Lafayette Campaign provides a satirical take on American politics and our infatuation with technology that should give anyone pause: everything you will read is technically accurate, and could really happen.

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Andrew Updegrove, an attorney, has been representing technology companies for more than thirty years and works with many of the organizations seeking to thwart cyber-attacks before they occur. A graduate of Yale University and the Cornell University Law School, he lives in Marblehead, Massachusetts.

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