Contest Monday - Get Published by HarperTeen!

You may remember way back in January when I announced that I would have a short story appearing in the upcoming HarperTeen anthology DEFY THE DARK, that I said there'd be more exciting news about how YOU could be in the anthology too. Well, that day has finally arrived!

HarperTeen and Figment have opened up the DEFY THE DARK Short Story Contest.

This cover is NOT FINAL, but isn't it pretty?

The contest is open to any unpublished writer, or published writer who has earned less than $2000 from their writing. All you need to do is write a 2000-4000 word story of any genre that mostly takes place at night, or in the dark.

You can be creative with this. It doesn't have to be dark and scary. A girl sneaking out at night to meet her secret crush fits just as well as those creepy things that go bump in the night.

You have until September 1st to write an upload your story to Figment. The winner gets:

• The winner will get paid and have their story published in DEFY THE DARK!
• Two second place winners will also win cash prizes from HarperCollins and have their stories published on the Defy The Dark website.

So what are you waiting for? Get all the contest details at the Figment.com DEFY THE DARK contest page!

What Are Your Keywords?

In a similar vein to Kristi's post on favorite romances, I thought I'd see what are some of your favorite words? The ones that when you seem them in a title, will always make you to pick up that book?

I've noticed that I have a few that get me every time. They are: water, river, lake, magic, and anything that implies winter, such as snow, frost, and of course, winter. Also, summer, lol.

I'm also attracted to covers that hint at these kind of stories. (I suppose it should be no surprise then, that my first book takes place in a town on a lake just as winter meets spring, so there's both snow, and rain.)

Here are some examples of books that had me drooling just from their titles and/or covers.





(^ I have so much love for this title, I can't even...)






What about you? What kind of titles or covers pique your interest?

Cover Love!

I'm a very visual person (hello, filmmaker!) so I find I'm really drawn to books by their covers. There are books I've bought (or in some cases pre-ordered), just because I loved the cover so much that I HAD to have it. Like these:




And books that I thought sounded pretty good, but whose cover made them seem awesome. Like these:




Upcoming Covers I'm drooling over:




I've tried to figure out just what it is that draws me to these covers but they're all pretty diverse. I'm definitely drawn to images that are outside, and not so much to faces. I also tend to like photographs more than drawings. I like images convey a mood - preferably a darker one. And images that are striking but I'm not that good at pointing out just what it is that makes them striking!

What about you? What are you drawn to in a cover? What are some of your favorites?

Be sure to check out Lacey's guest post at Adventures In Children's Publishing today!