Announcing the "Inspired By" Contest

A couple weeks back, I blogged about how over the moon I get when people tell me they were inspired by my book and how I wanted to do some sort of fan art contest. Well, I've finally had the time to figure out details (for the most part, there are a couple of legalities I am waiting to hear back from the publisher about) so now I am happy to announce the Inspired By Contest!

There will be two categories for the Inspired By Contest: Fan Art and Soundtrack.

Fan Art Category:

Submit your songs, poems, drawings, paintings, photography, zines etc that are inspired by IWBYJR OR dress up as a character, film a scene from the book, make a She Laughs music video OR design a logo for a She Laughs band t-shirt. Basically anything creative that is inspired by the book will be creative.

You will need to submit your entries by email to stephanie at stephaniekuehnert dot com, which means that you will need to be able to send a photograph of your art project or in the case of songs or videos, you will need to send me a link to where I can hear/see the song/video like on YouTube or MySpace or whatever. Please also include a sentence or so about how the artistic endeavor was inspired by IWBYJR ie "This song is about a relationship like Emily and Johnny's" or "This is me dressing up like Emily did for her first show" or "This is a painting inspired by Louisa." Oh and yes, you can submit up to three entries as long as they are different types, ie. one song, one soundtrack, one She Laughs logo design.

Deadline is January 15th. This should give you time after the madness of the Holidays, but of course if I don't get enough entries or you guys don't think this is enough time, I'll push it back.

Judging will be done by the blog readers. I'll post a blog entry with all the photos and links and ask people to vote. Yeah, you can vote for your own or send your friends to vote for you, that's fine!

Grand Prize will be your choice of a 25$ online gift certificate to either DownloadPunk or Amazon or (if we have them) a She Laughs t-shirt PLUS a signed poster from my Metro reading with Irvine Welsh (signed by me, Irvine, and Bill Hillmann, pictured above) PLUS once I receive them (which may not be until spring), you will get a signed, advanced reader's copy of my next book Ballads of Suburbia!

Second Place will get a signed poster from my Metro reading with Irvine Welsh (signed by me, Irvine, and Bill Hillmann).

Three Runners Up will get signed coverflats of IWBYJR.

All Winners will have their work posted on or linked from my website.

And note that depending on the number of entries, I will try to do a little something for everyone who enters, like either put your stuff up on the website or send you a signed bookmark or something!

A note about the She Laughs logo design entries/making t-shirts: this is the thing I am waiting to get legal clearance on from the publisher. If we get legal clearance (which will probably involve me posting some legal mumbo jumbo and potentially having the winner sign something), I may like to use one or more of the She Laughs logos that is designed to actually sell shirts for charity via a Cafe Press store. If your design is chosen, regardless to how you place in the contest, you will receive a t-shirt with your design!

Soundtrack Category:

This is for those of you who like me, may not be musically or artistically inclined (though I could write a poem or dress up as a character and I'm willing to bet most of you could too) or who just LOVE making mix CDs.

Submit your list of up to 20 songs that would be on your personal IWBYJR soundtrack. Unless the song is super popular (ie. Nirvana' or the Beatles or Britney Spears or something), if you can give a link to where the song can be heard or a YouTube video or something that would be great. Even more awesome, do your soundtrack on Project Playlist. Send the list of songs or link to Project Playlist to stephanie at stephaniekuehnert dot com.

Deadline is January 15th.

Judging will be done by the blog readers and again, you can vote for your own or send your friends to vote for you, that's fine!

Grand Prize will be a copies of both of my soundtracks (I have one for IWBYJR and one for Ballads) PLUS once I receive them (which may not be until spring), you will get a signed, advanced reader's copy of my next book Ballads of Suburbia!

3 Runners Up will receive their choice of either my IWBYJR soundtrack or my Ballads soundtrack.

All Winners will have their soundtracks posted on my website. And depending on the number of entries, I may post all entries on my website.

Okay, that's everything. If there are any questions or comments about the contest, please go ahead and post them so I can clarify or improve things. I hope lots of you will enter in one or both categories!

In the meantime, remember today is your last day to enter to win a heilege CD by checking out and commenting on the WWRW interview with Jenny Hassler. I've been playing the heilege songs non-stop, so I highly encourage you to check it out and enter!