Song Quest cover contest

Calling all artists! If you enjoy creating artwork, either by hand or on a computer, then trot over to the Bookette’s blog where you’ll find a fabulous competition to design a new cover for Katherine’s debut novel Song Quest. The competition is part of a campaign to bring this book back into print for a new generation of readers. Prizes include a signed hardcover edition of the second Echorium book Crystal Mask plus other surprise goodies.

To give you an idea, so far Song Quest has had these two editions in the UK:

Element
Chicken House
and this one in America


It has also been translated into Chinese, Japanese and Italian. The Italian cover looks like the Chicken House one with a swirly silver title. The Japanese cover is dark blue and moody. The Chinese covers (two editions - complex and simple characters) are colourful stylised versions of the Chicken House one and also have black and white interior artwork.

When designing a book cover, it helps to know what the story is about. This one is a fantasy quest to save the half-human half-fish merlee from ruthless hunters (which is why you can see mermaids on some of the covers, though merlee can be male too). The heroine Rialle has blue hair and is training to be a Singer at a remote island school called the Echorium in a world where songs control the wind and the waves. A villain called the Khizpriest is behind the merlee hunting and wields a staff of dark crystal. Fortunately, the Singers have five songs of power they can use to defeat him...

For healing sleep of lavender dreams,
For laughter golden and gay,
For tears shed in turquoise streams,
For fear, blood and scarlet screams,
For death of deepest midnight shade.
For these the Songs, five in one -
Challa, Kashe, Shi, Aushan, Yehn
.

To use these songs most effectively, five Singers must stand on the points of a pentangle or five-pointed star, while the person having song therapy sits on a spinning stool in the centre. But Singers can also influence people by humming them under their breath while speaking – the songs themselves are wordless chants, rather like those you might have heard monks chanting in our own world.

Inspired yet? Then get designing, because this competition closes on 8th May!