For our March Book of the Month, we featured The Body Finder Series by Kimberly Derting — and for our contest this month, we asked you to tell us … what’s your echo? That is, we wanted you to describe what your own echo might appear like to Violet, the main character in The Body Finder books.
Each of our three winners will receive an awesome Desires of the Dead prize pack from Harper Teen & Kim herself, including a signed copy of the book and assorted swag!
In no particular order, here are the three winners:
Julie M.:
My echo? My echo would represent my interests and my hobbies, my loves and my delights. It would represent ‘me’ and who I was in my life. Its fragrance would be my perfume, that’s a blend of the sour scent of lemons and the sweet aroma of vanilla, along with the smell left after a rainstorm. The taste it would carry would be the tangy flavor of salt and vinegar potato chips, my favorite snack food, along with the fresh smell of a new book. The sight it would convey would be sparkles that glinted in the sunlight because I love anything that glitters and is simply pretty. The scratching sound of pen on paper, the clicking of a keyboard that never seems to stop, and the crisp sound of pages being turned would create the harmony that calls out to Violet. My echo would be unique and would show Violet what makes me special in my own way. It would reveal everything that has a piece, no matter big or small, in my life.
Elizabeth T.:
What was that sound? It was like the drone of a bumblebee, but somehow more delicate. Fast, like a heart about to burst. Wings – it had to be wings. You could almost hear the faint rasp of air between each feather tip. Hummingbirds. Dozens of them, all swooping in unison.
The wing beats faded; the smell hit. It was soft, but it was everywhere, overwhelming everything else. There was an impression of fragile petals, the lingering taste of sweetness in the back of the throat. The cloying taste of honey was on the tip of her tongue, and the small flowers dusted her cheeks. Honeysuckle. Millions of them, as if it was a private garden full of nothing but the saccharine buds.
There was a faint color surrounding everything. It shifted constantly, from a bright gold to a subtle lime, to a dusky emerald. It was almost like…leaves. Like sunlight falling through a thick canopy on a spring afternoon. Ever changing, ever evolving into colors only nature could create.
It was faint, yet strong all at the same time. And then it was gone, fading back into the cement and iron of the city. Gone just as quickly as it had come.
And finally … Danyelle L. — whose entry is both chilling & disturbingly hilarious. Authors everywhere, take note:
My echo would be in the form of a few hundred white papers and a laptop. The papers would flutter against the sky where they’d been snagged by tree branches. She would catch hold of one like a stray bird. It would tremble with wind and words. She would notice the pages were numbered at the top and full of red ink.
As she held the pages, she would see the words coming to life, bodies peeling themselves from print, a storm of emotion, red ink splattered all over everything. She would see me, typing away at a silver laptop, unaware as the form rippling with words came up behind me, holding nothing more than a single red pen.
The pages would lead her to a rabbit hole rather full of laptop. She would pull it out, the dirt crumbling away, leaving behind a gaping mouth. And a red pen. And the bottom of a foot.
My foot.
And a warning affixed to my ankle by way of white string and a tag: Let this serve as a warning to authors everywhere. Do not do unto your characters what you would not have them do unto you.
Be sure to check out our other on-going contests in the sidebar on your right!
Novel Novice 
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