Mother & Child Book Cover Competition, Enter your artwork!

July 2011

Here as promised is the competition information.

I have also included the link which will enable people to read my short story collection online, if they should wish.

It is not essential to read the collection in order to enter the competition, although reading the title story, Mother And Child, may be helpful.

The objective is for me to be able to print the winning picture on the cover of my short story collection, and obviously I would want the artists' consent to do so, for which they will be credited.

I am not in a position to be able to earn royalties from sales, because of my situation living on benefits. Recently, my poetry collection, 50 x 50 - Useful Poetry For Troubled Times - has been reproduced in a new edition for sale by the Queen Alexandra Hospital Home for Soldiers, and they will receive all of the proceeds of the sale of this edition by way of a fund-raising initiative.. It may well be that I can find a similar charitable organisation that will be interested in selling and therefore receiving the benefit of the sales of my short stories, in which case I would be delighted to be able to negotiate a percentage of sales to the selected artist.

Since the first story in the collection is the title story, Mother And Child, it would make sense for entrants to read at least this story.

In summary, it is the story of an artist whose legacy is really his paintings, and of course reading the story will give you the full picture. In effect, I would like to think that the cover illustration might be mistaken as a work by the artist in the story.

Reading the story will make this clear, and at the very end of the story, as two people close to the artist are beginning to catalogue his work, a picture falls to the ground, and it is a picture of a mother and child.

In my mind, it is a black and white image, perhaps in charcoal, although this is very much open to interpretation.

I will certainly give a copy of my short stories to the winning entrant, and indeed copies of my short stories can be purchased at cost price after the summer, and this will be about £3.00 per copy. The length of the volume is about 230 pages, and at present, it is a fairly gaudy pink in colour, but this could be changed obviously in discussion with the artist chosen by me as representative of the collection.

In my mind, I imagine that the picture will be printed on the front of the collection in a box in which it sits as a black on white image.

Once again, this could be open to interpretation, and in effect the competition winner will be the person with the best overall idea for how to present the collection of short stories with this title.

In other words, at present what I have on the pink cover is a photograph of the mother and child, taken from a film from the Festival in Spain that involves the construction of large statues that are then burned at the culmination of the festival, the Fallas in Valencia.

It is quite possible that the best image for the collection might be reproduced in a similar way, not as a black on white image, but as a change in the cover color so that it appears like a watermark on the cover. This is up to the artist concerned.

The link I have enclosed with this letter will enable people with access to the Internet to read the collection free of charge. As I have said, it is not essential to read the story, but this will probably be an advantage.


Stephen Page Short Stories

Stephen Page Short Stories