Hello all! After being cocooned in a writing cave recently, I've decided to turn to the web for help threading my prose together. I need some silky words to weave together this blurb about a world where humans live in harmony with spiders.
...
Ok, that's all the spider jokes I can think of. Anyway, it's a short story I'm working on, about 10,000 words. I'm pretty happy with it. The title is Red Silk Spider. It's sci-fi with one big action scene. Kind of feels like an X Files set 400 years in the future maybe? With spiders. Here are three blurbs that tackle it from different sides. I'm not sure if short story blurbs should be as long as novel blurbs, so I've tried to play with that too.
Any feedback on which blurb you think sells the story best would be very appreciated!
Blurb 1
Four hundred years in the future, spiders and humans will live in harmony. Arachnophobia is bigotry. And the silk of spiders decorate our bodies in elaborate tattoos as part of the spider mating ritual.
For Charlotte and her spider Helena, it’s all perfectly natural. Until a volcanic eruption unleashes a new force on the world that threatens them both.
Blurb 2
Four hundred years after humanity's reckless abuse of the environment causes a catastrophe known as The Fall, humans have bioengineered replacements for the species we used to share the planet with. We live in harmony with everything, even black widow spiders.
But Charlotte and her spider Helena are about to learn that something can still threaten that balance: nature itself.
Blurb 3
"I'll scratch your back, you eat my face."
So thinks Charlotte of her pet black widow spider, Helena. Between the red silk tattoo Helena created on Charlotte's body over night, and the cloud of volcanic ash threatening the city, it's going to be that kind of day.
But when it's discovered that the volcano may have released more than just ash, Charlotte and Helena are going to learn that there are some things more urgent than a spider's mating instinct and more deadly than a black widow's venom.
