CONTEST: Make me a cover!

As most of you know by now, I blog every Friday at The Debutante Ball, a group blog chronicling the debut year of five authors from different genres.

Since my book release is set for the last month of our blogging year, I’m a bit behind my Debutante Ball sisters with publication milestones like pre-order links and reviews.

And while I celebrated recently when another sister got her book cover, I’ll admit I was a little jealous. That officially made me the only member without one.

Hey, I’m OK with waiting. One reason I was thrilled when my agent landed me this three-book deal with Sourcebooks is that their book covers seriously rock. Never once have I looked at a Sourcebooks cover and thought, “boy that author must want to gouge her eyes out with a thumbtack.” I can’t say the same for many romance covers I’ve seen.

So I know my cover will be gorgeous when I get it.

Still, I’m curious. I decided to hire my own artist just to give me an idea what my book cover could look like. It took a little maneuvering with child labor laws, but eventually I was able to commission world-famous artist Dru Powelson (who also happens to be the 10 year old son of one of my beta readers, Minta Powelson).

After reviewing the blurb for MAKING WAVES, Dru created the following beautiful cover for my debut romantic comedy:

I’m forwarding it to my editor immediately, and I'm sure she'll be as delighted as I am.

Since tastes can differ (hey, it's like we talked about Wednesday!) I might as well have a few options available. Want to play? Draw, paint, sculpt, photograph, or make me a pudding painting depicting what you think the cover for MAKING WAVES should look like. Feel free to get your kids involved.

Though I can’t say your lovely artwork will appear anywhere besides this blog, it will give us all something to gaze at between now and the date I get my real cover.

To see what the MAKING WAVES is about, go here. To send me your masterpiece, email a PDF, GIF or JPG to tawnafenske at yahoo dot com. I’ll judge entries at noon on Saturday, November 20, so you’ve got over a week to get artsy.

The winner will get a signed copy of Eileen Cook’s YA novel WHAT WOULD EMMA DO from Simon Pulse. Eileen is one of the founding members of The Debutante Ball, and I had the pleasure of hearing her speak at a conference. Seriously, seriously hysterical. Author Meg Cabot called this book “Sassy and sly and sweet all at the same time, this book made me laugh out loud.”

Laughing is good, and so are signed books. Want it? Go forth and create! Leave any questions in the comments and I’ll do my best to answer.

Oh, and stop by The Debutante Ball today to see what book I talked about as the one that changed my life. Hint: it contains paper collage illustrations of chickens humping. What's not to love about that?