The Massive Prophecy Fanart Contest! And March's Reader of the Month!
First things first… March's Reader of the Month is Mia Brigitte! Mia's been a loyal Prophecy reader and regular fixture on this site for a long time now, and I couldn't be happier to name her this month's Reader. As such, she'll receive a $25 book store gift card to the store of her choice (providing I can purchase it online since she's in Norway!), a "Victorian Guys Are Hot" Prophecy t-shirt, and a True Blue Spa pack from Bath and Body Works.
Readers of the month are chosen from active Forum participants, so be sure to register for April!
I'm SO excited to finally launch this month's Prophecy of the Sisters Fanart contest. I know Ive been hyping it for awhile now, but that's just because I'm so psyched! I love fanart and since I'll be launching a page dedicated to Prophecy fanart in the coming weeks, it seems like a perfect time to hold a contest celebrating the art that is, well, fanart!
Here's how it works;
Create your original Prophecy fanart. You submit as many pieces as you like between now and midnight EST on March 31st using any and all mediums – video, animation, pastels, oils, sketches, photographs, manipulated photographs, and anything else I haven't named here – so long as you can email the file to us. The only requirement is that it fits the story, mood, characters, etc. of the story and world that is Prophecy.
Email your fanart to prophecypress@aol.com with "Prophecy Fanart Contest" in the Subject line.
All entries will be forwarded to our panel of judges at which time the judges will each choose their Top Five entries.
The winners will be chosen from this list, with the Grand Prize going to the piece with the most votes followed by two runners up.
The Grand Prize Winner will receive Photoshop CS5 Extended Teach/ Student edition. This is an AWESOME edition! All you have to do is follow the instructions provided to email or fax a copy of your student or teacher ID to Adobe. I purchased this edition for my daughter recently (she's interested in becoming a graphic designer and uses this to design my bookmarks and other printed material) and she received her activation code from Adobe less than 24 hours after emailing a copy of her student ID. It's easy! If you would like to participate in the contest but are not a teacher or student, go ahead and enter. If you win, I'll send you a gift card to Amazon instead in the amount of the Teacher/Student Edition and you can put it toward the regular Edition. The Grand Prize Winner will also receive signed copies of Prophecy of the Sisters and Guardian of the Gate.
The two runners up will each receive a sketchpad, a set of acrylic pains/pastels (there's one of each), a set of sketching pencils, a sketching accessory set (includes a kneaded eraser, gum eraser, and plastic eraser). They will also each receive a signed copy of Prophecy of the Sisters and Guardian of the Gate.
This contest has also been promoted in local high school art classes. We expect a lot of entries, so hurry and get your art on! All entries will be posted here on the website so that everyone can bask in their awesomeness. By entering the contest, you are authorizing Michelle Zink to post the piece(s) on www.michellezink.com. All other rights remain with you, the artist. Please spread the word to your fellow artists!
You can purchase Prophecy of the Sisters and Guardian of the Gate if you think it will help you in creating art for the book. You can also use the trailers, music, summaries, and other information on this site.
And now, let's meet our judges!
I'm super excited to have all four of them on the judging panel. Not only are they all amazingly talented writers, but their experience and interests span so many creative mediums from scriptwriting and producing, costuming, fashion, and perfumery.
Our first judge is Saundra Mitchell. A screenwriter and author, Saundra Mitchell penned the screenplays for the Fresh Films and Girls in the Director's Chair short film series. Now an executive producer and head writer for the programs, she mentors young screenwriters from first page to production.
Her short story "Ready to Wear" was nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and her first feature film, Revenge Ends, debuted on the festival circuit in 2008. Her debut novel, SHADOWED SUMMER, won The Society of Midland Authors Book Award for Children's Fiction, was a 2010 Edgar® Award Nominee, a VOYA Summer Reading selection, a Junior Library Guild selection, and an ALAN Pick in 2009. You can find out more about that novel here.
In her free time, she enjoys studying history, papermaking, and spending time with her husband and her two children. She lives in Indianapolis and welcomes you to visit her on the Web at www.saundramitchell.com.
Saundra's new book, The Vespertine releases on March 7th (just one week!) and is at the very top of my Books I'm Excited About list.
It's the summer of 1889, and Amelia van den Broek is new to Baltimore and eager to take in all the pleasures the city has to offer. But her gaiety is interrupted by disturbing, dreamlike visions she has only at sunset—visions that offer glimpses of the future. Soon, friends and strangers alike call on Amelia to hear her prophecies. However, a forbidden romance with Nathaniel, an artist, threatens the new life Amelia is building in Baltimore. This enigmatic young man is keeping secrets of his own—still, Amelia finds herself irrepressibly drawn to him. When one of her darkest visions comes to pass, Amelia's world is thrown into chaos. And those around her begin to wonder if she's not the seer of dark portents, but the cause.
Awesome, right?!
LISA MANTCHEV wrote her first play in the fourth grade, and has been involved in the theater ever since. She has published numerous short stories in addition to the Theatre Illuminata series. She lives with her husband, daughter, a new baby affectionately referred to as Tinydoom!, and four hairy miscreant dogs on the Olympic Peninsula of Washington state.
And Holyawesomecover, Batman! Check this cover out!
[image error]Beatrice Shakespeare Smith's search for her stolen companion has brought her travelling company far from the stage of the Théâtre Illuminata. With the power of her words, Bertie can reshape reality, but the magic is wild and defies her attempts to control it. The Pirate's time is running out and Sea Goddess will not give up her prize willingly. Learn more about Lisa's work at www.theatre-illuminata.com.
Perchance to dream is the second book in the Theatre Illuminata Series. The third and final book, So Silver Bright, will be out this September 13th.
A native Californian, C. Lee McKenzie loves to do three things: write, hike and practice yoga.
She wrote her first young adult novel, Sliding on the Edge, after reading a news article about "self-abuse" among ivy league students. It was so disturbing to think young people needed to inflict pain on themselves to cope with their lives that she finally had to write about it. It turned out to be a fictionalize account that she hopes offers some insights into the growing problem.
Her second novel, The Princess of Las Pulgas, is now out and deals with a young girl's family in distress. Learn more about Lee at www.cleemckenziebook.com.
[image error]After her father's slow death from cancer, Carlie thought things couldn't get worse. But now, she is forced to confront the fact that her family in dire financial straits. To stay afloat, her mom has had to sell their cherished oceanfront home and move Carlie and her younger brother Keith to the other side of the tracks to dreaded Las Pulgas, or "the fleas" in Spanish. They must now attend a tough urban high school instead of their former elite school, and on Carlie's first day of school, she runs afoul of edgy K.T., the Latina tattoo girl who's always ready for a fight, even on crutches. Carlie fends off the attention of Latino and African American teen boys, and one, a handsome seventeen-year-old named Juan, nicknames her Princess when he detects her aloof attitude towards her new classmates. What they don't know is that Carlie isn't really aloof; she's just in mourning for her father and almost everything else that mattered to her. Mr. Smith, the revered English teacher who engages all his students, suggests she'll like her new classmates if she just gives them a chance; he cajoles her into taking over the role of Desdemona in the junior class production of Othello, opposite Juan, after K.T. gets sidelined. Keith, who becomes angrier and more sullen by the day, spray paints insults all over the gym as he acts out his anger over the family's situation and reduced circumstances. Even their cat Quicken goes missing, sending Carlie and Keith on a search into the orchard next to their seedy garden apartment complex. They're met by a cowboy toting a rifle who ejects them at gunpoint from his property. But when Carlie finds him amiably having coffee with their mom the next day — when he's returned her cat — she begins to realize that nothing is what it seems in Las Pulgas.
Jessica Verday writes the first drafts of her novels by hand, using spiral-bound notebooks and black pens. She likes: things that smell nice, rainy nights, old books, cemeteries, Johnny Cash, zombie movies, L.J. Smith books, abandoned buildings, trains, and snow. She is currently hand-writing the continuation of Abbey and Caspian's story from her home in Goodlettsville, Tennessee. The Haunted is the second book in The Hollow Trilogy. The third and final book, The Hidden, comes out September 6th. Find out more at www.jessicaverday.com.
[image error] After months spent reclaiming her sanity and trying to forget the boy she fell in love with–the boy who must not exist, cannot exist, because she knows that he is dead–Abbey returns to Sleepy Hollow, ready to leave the ghosts of her past behind. But Abbey can never get over Caspian, and Caspian has no choice but to return to her side, for Caspian is a Shade, and Abbey is his destiny.
