Contest: Derp Me!

I was shooting some video and realized I’d accidentally bumped the selfie button while using my phone camera to check lighting. That’s how this starts.

hair flip

Accidental hair flip selfie.

And I thought that expression and that green screen were just too inviting, and so we’re going to play with them.

But just one image might not be enough to spark everyone’s creative genius. Fortunately, my face is pretty expressive. People often had trouble telling my sister and me apart in costume, so we made this handy field guide:

Alena: classy cosplayer. Laura: comic relief.

That means there’s usually a gold mine of expressions in individual frames of video. So here’s one I found:

Laura looking distressed in front of green screen.

Believe it or not, this is me talking about so much fun. Because that’s a happy face.

Here’s what I want to do: turn you guys loose with these pics. Decide what I’m distressed about or where I’m flipping my hair so… flippantly. Am I…

  • flicking an annoying dragon from my shoulder?
  • fighting back horror as I face an overstuffed email inbox?
  • fleeing from an angry horde of brownies? (The folklore kind or the edible kind or the young Girl Scout kind, you pick.)

The green background should make this an easy photo manipulation — but not all of us are slick Photoshop users. If you have another idea, go for it. Any creative take on my distress or hair flip, in visual art, words, song, sculpture, interpretive dance, whatever, is eligible.

The rules: Keep it PG or thereabouts, please. While I don’t write for kids, I do promise that my site is mostly kid-friendly, so no nekkid bits or extreme gore will be shared here. Winner will be chosen via a bizarre and wholly subjective algorithm of both execution and sheer concept, so if you aren’t sure you can nail both, just hit one or the other really hard. Small images above should link to full-size images for you to work with. Deadline for submission is Friday, April 7. Submit by emailing me a link to your entry, so I don’t get a bunch of weird attachments in my inbox.

The winner will get three ebooks of their choice from my catalog, fiction or non-fiction!

But Laura, I already have all of your books!

Of course you do, you reader of fabulous taste, you. That’s why I’m sweetening the pot with a $20 Amazon gift card as well. So you can buy other people’s books, too. Or chocolate. Or maybe these things.

Okay, show me your moves.

(Oh, and I should mention that if you haven’t seen the Irish writing retreat/workshop/tour, you definitely should. It will be fantastic. You should come. And subscribers got a sneak peek of a story in progress this week, so if you’re sad you missed out on that, you can catch the next one.)

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One Comment

  1. I am excited to read your books. You appear to a hoot. I will definitely let you know what I think…it may be a little bit. You would not believe my to be read pile so bear with me.

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