Writer's Grove

Drop. Your. Sword.

I’ve always loved that bit in The Princess Bride where Westley (as the Dread Pirate Roberts) tells Prince Humperdinck, “Drop. Your. Sword.”  Best. Bluff. Ever. It just sort of occurred to me that Atticus is kind of doing something like that on the cover of Hexed. There he is, staring at you, with Fragarach coming around to point at your heart…but you really don’t want to mess with him. He’s worse than the Dread Pirate Roberts. He’s totally badass, and I happen to know what he’s facing because I wrote the book. But the immature part o’ me mind (to which I admit I give far too much freedom) wants to maybe have a bit of fun with this. Unlike the other two covers in The Iron Druid Chronicles, this one really lends itself to a kind of caption contest. A photobomb kind of thing. What is Atticus doing here? Protecting something? Attacking something? Posing pointlessly? Let’s mess around with this! I just want to see my book in some crazy pictures. I’ll give you some time to think about it, and then you’ll have about a week to get ‘er done once the book comes out June 7—let’s make the deadline for entries June 15. I’ll repost the contest rules on June 7, and you can send me your stuff at that time—either JPEGs via email or post a link to your photo(s) in the comments. The prizes? I’m going to give away five (5) signed author copies of HAMMERED. Is this international? HELL YES. Two winners will be picked randomly. Three winners will be picked because they amuse me. Please shoot your photo and provide a title or caption or both. Here’s my sample, which is not stunningly original but is rather intended to set the bar very low (including in photo quality, because my camera phone sucks) for your own creations:

So what do you think? You can come up with something better, right? Atticus is TALKING to you on the cover of Hexed…what’s he saying? Have fun thinking stuff up!