Publication day for Children of Earth and Sky is today in US/Canada – and on Thursday in UK. A good time to announce a contest with a really great prize. To celebrate?

Three years ago we did a photo contest on Twitter for RIVER OF STARS. The best, funniest, most creative/beautiful/interesting photo of the book ‘in the wild’, would win a prize. It was a lot of fun, even the publicists got in to the act, competing with each other.

Here’s the winner from back then, and the runner-up. Yes, there is an unfair advantage to being able to take a photo at 25,000 feet. But still, how cool is that? The runner-up was the excellent (and brave!) YA novelist Jessica Day George, whose caption was, ‘Shh! Mommy’s reading!’

And here are two more we liked…

So, start your cell phones and cameras. Three entries per person max. The contest will run on Twitter again under the hashtag (Penguin Canada’s idea) #ReadThisGuy (I know, I know). Remember to USE the hashtag, so judges can find your photo.

If you absolutely avoid Twitter, and still want to play, we’ll try to keep an eye out for any photos uploaded to the FB page at https://www.facebook.com/Guy-Gavriel-Kay-189763622002/ and ‘port’ them over to the Twitter hashtag. But to see other entries (and react to them!) you’ll have to get over to Twitter and search for the hashtag. That’s what the judges will do.

The judges … all three of my editors have agreed to judge! Nicole Winstanley in Toronto, Claire Zion in New York, Oliver Johnson in London. Editors are so judgmental anyhow, right? Yes, I also expect to have ‘opinions’. (Moi?)

The deadline? Let’s give it 3 weeks, to be sure people have time to get their books and figure out a photo idea. So: May 31st is the cut-off.

The prize? Here is where it gets good. Penguin Canada have celebrated already by making up a very small number of leatherbound copies of CHILDREN. Seriously. Leatherbound. And one of these collectibles, signed, will be the prize for the winner. We will also have a prize for the runner-up. To be determined, but it’ll be nice. Promise.

Hope people have fun with this. Show us what you can do. Would leather look good on your bookshelf? Go for it.