Two Worlds Collide

It sounds like the title of either a SF or maybe a romantic suspense book, Two Words Collide, but it’s actually been my office for the last year or so as I shift my focus of work from pure urban fantasy where the characters are witches, vampires, and Weres, to something a little more mainstream. Reader, oh, my reader, don’t despair. The same things that you liked in the Hollows will be in the Peri Reed Chronicles. The trappings have changed, not the soul of my work. Trust is a hard to earn, and I hope that in the last ten years, you’ve learned to trust the storyteller. It’s what I do.

As I took the picture below, I realized at just that moment that it is a visual culmination of not just the last ten years of the Hollows linked to the new beginning of the Peri Reed Chronicles, but a gathering of my aware years of life from The Little Engine That Could, to Blade Runner, to Elysium, to The Big Bang Theory. (Yep, I watch ’em.) So seeing an urban fantasy cover next to the first Peri Reed freebie looks natural to me, even as it’s kind of odd. There–on the background of tomatoes.

The Witch With No Name is there because it comes out in paperback tomorrow, and the Peri Reed’s freebie is there because (insert quaver into voice) it’s time. It’s finally time.

Peri’s first freebie is a mockup of her glass-technology phone, which is why I’ve got that white piece of paper clipped to it. Otherwise, you’d see right through it. Peri’s version rolls up into a tube, reads data by putting the chip anywhere on the phone, and connects automatically to the pay-at-point-of-sale system at every retailer, fast food, and transport in Peri’s not so distant future. ��Right now, Peri’s phone shows the cover of THE DRAFTER so it has some sort of marketing value as I give these away for SASEs and at the events, but I like it because you can see through it. I want her phone. I also want her car, and maybe her boyfriend, (then again, maybe not) but that’s another story.

Here’s where you come in. Most phones have backgrounds, right? So I’m coming at you guys to help me out here. I’m going to make a cling that fits the back of Peri’s phone, probably one or two a year while the series runs, and I want one of the first to be Peri’s cat. You guys have cats, right?

All I need from you is to send me a picture of YOUR cat. I can’t stress enough that this has to be your cat, or at least one that belongs to someone you know. No lifting of photos from the web. I’m going to ask the winners to take another picture of their cat with something I pick so to prove that it’s theirs, and of course ask them to sign a release form so I can print and distribute the photo of their/Peri’s cat.

I’m going to run the contest for a good three weeks, picking the best five photos every week that I think are the most suitable, then letting you guys pick the best one from that five. At the end of three weeks, I’ll have a final contest with the top three to pick the one that I make the cling out of. I’m also trying to find a way to maybe get a signed copy of something to the weekly five winners as a thank you, so don’t be surprised if I ask for an email in the submission process so I can get your address. Photos will be displayed on line, so don’t send me one if you don’t want it there.

When you take your picture of your cat, a few things to keep in mind to be one of my favorite five that you guys can vote on:

1. No gnarly backgrounds like legs or TVs.

2. No people at all in the photo. I won’t even post them.

3. No identifying logos or brand names.

4. Make it something that a person might want on their phone. Cute is okay, but a nice picture of a sleeping cat has just as much pull with me as one playing with a mouse, maybe more.

5. Vertical oriented pictures rather than horizontal will get preferential treatment, just so they look better on the mock-up.

6. Sorry, no kittens.

I’ve cut out the description of Peri’s cat from the first book intentionally just so I could do this, so take some pictures, and tomorrow, when THE WITCH WITH NO NAME comes out, I’ll tell you how to send them to me. Keep in mind that this is going to run for three weeks, and you can enter one picture every week.

See you tomorrow for where to submit! I hope this is going to be fun. It’s going to be a lot of work on my end, but I’m on “vacation” (ha, ha, ha. Like I ever really take one?) for the next three weeks, so I’ve got the time.