Fanart Judge C. Lee McKenzie PLUS Contest Winners!

I'm very pleased to introduce our last Fanart judge, C. Lee MacKenzie.

But first, I have some very important business to attend to. Namely, the winners of my joint giveaway with photographer Heather Gardner for one of the prints from the Circle of Fire trailer shoot, signed copies of Prophecy of the Sisters and Guardian of the Gate, and a postcard with a personal message from moi.

We had over 700 entries in this contest. It was HUGE! But the winners were chosen by my assistant from all entries received on both Heather's site and this one using the Random Number Generator.

And the winners are….

Amy Polen and Akasha Hale!

Congrats to both of you! Please send your mailing addresses to prophecypress@aol.com. Don't forget to let us know which trailer photo you'd like!

And now, I'm super excited to introduce Lee McKenzie, author of Sliding on the Edge and The Princess of Las Pulgas.

[image error]Lee is one of those people that I just immediately connected with. She radiates serenity and goodness, both in person and online, and is an example of how to conduct oneself with integrity and dignity in this increasingly crazy, pressure-filled business.

But the very first thing that drew me to Lee was her writing. I was fortunate enough to read Sliding on the Edge in ARC form before it was published, and I was completely bowled over. It was different from anything I'd ever read, and I proceeded to shout from the rooftops about it at every opportunity, even putting it on my Under the Radar books list because I SO wanted people to read it. It deals with self-mutilation (cutting) in an honest, heartbreaking way, and it's a story that's stayed with me ever since.

More recently, I was honored to blurb the Princess of Las Pulgas, a timely story about an affluent girl whose family loses everything and is forced to move to a less desirable part of town after the death of her father, I was once again blown away by Lee's simple but moving prose and characters that felt like they could be be anyone and everyone I'd ever known.

Lee is a phenomenally gifted writer and a lovely, lovely human being. I hope you'll all support her work by giving her books, Sliding on the Edge and The Princess of Las Pulgas a try. You can learn more about Lee and her work at http://www.cleemckenziebooks.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.

Fanart entries are still coming in and you have two more days to enter. The grand prize, Photoshop CS5 Extended, is a big one, so hurry and get your entries in by midnight EST on March 31st. There are also two runner upprize packs that have some awesome art-related goodies, making this all in all a very worthwhile contest, plus you get the opportunity to showcase some of you art.

So get on it. You got this!