You think it would get easier describing your book to someone else. The funny thing is that I'm pretty good when it comes to hooks, blurbs, short-n-sweet descriptions, but in the beginning, I still struggle to put into words what I've, er, put into words. Does that happen to anyone else?
Maybe it's different if you write vampires or zombies or something concrete and easily-recognized. For me, it doesn't work as I tend to write "fantasy" as a broad category and then it falls apart like sliced stale bread into a powdery mess when I say, "well it's like X, but not quite." Let's take, for example, my latest project on the block: INDELIBLE INK. It's based loosely on classic fairy lore, "loosely" defined as "if anyone knows this vague reference to old folklore, they'd recognize it" and a little bit of this and a little bit of that (which makes sense because that was back when I was writing this manuscript). Sprinkle in:
the logo from CASTLE
a little Sandman Dream-meets-The Goblin King
a little Peter Pan-meets-Joe Black
a Russian male underwear model
Thank you very much, Ilya Safronovich!
a Chinese money frog
Photo gakked from thefullwiki.org
a Norse battle g-ddess
Winged depiction ala www.heartit.com
and a vintage Bentley
BTW, you, too, can "get kempt" at www.getkempt.com!
...and that's just for starters! See what I mean? ;-)