Have any of this year’s chalkoff winners, besides Stephanie, actually received their prizes? I know a few promised goodies haven’t gone out; everything should be in the mail by Monday.

This year’s theme was a tough one – Pre-50′s comic characters – but we still had a fair number of entries, and the overall quality of the individual submissions was very high. One entry was downright astonishing; another was even better. Shane and I had a lot of fun doing our judging thing. Our picks follow the jump.

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Shane and I will go over the entries and announce winners sometime here in the next week. We had about the same number of players as last year, but the quality of the individual entries was much higher this time around. My thanks to everyone who took an afternoon off to play my silly reindeer game. More soon.

Just a little over four days left before the chalkoff is a done deal. There’s a free video iPod to whoever takes first place, so you’d be crazy not to enter. Prizes for the runner-ups, too. All contest info here.

The good news for people who haven’t entered yet is that so far there are only a very small number of entries, so statistically speaking your chances of winning something are high. The bad news is that the small few who have entered have turned in some really gorgeous work. Ask yourself, though: what’chu got to lose? Worst case scenario, you wind up blowing an hour or two in the sun, zoning out while you make some art. And what’s wrong with that?

Yeah, you’re a winner! And I’m a winner too! We’re all winners… at the game of life!

But there can only be five winners in the Annual August chalkoff, and of them, only one gets the free iPod. You want a shot, you need to get your entry to us by the end of the month. Rules and game info here.

All the information about the Annual August chalkoff is here. Read, draw, and get in the game before it’s too late. Have I mentioned this is probably the easiest-to-win free iPod on the web?

August will be over before you know it. Don’t end your summer with regrets. Time to get your chalk on.

One day, in December of 1950, lightning struck and changed everything.

The lightning in this case was the zig-zag bolt that appeared on Charlie Brown’s sweater. Chuck first turned up in newspapers in the fall of 1950, and wandered morosely through a couple months worth of strips, having relatively unmemorable adventures while wearing a relatively unmemorable white shirt. But then in mid-December he put on a sweater with a lightning bolt zig-zag across the front, and didn’t take it off for nearly half a century… and in the process became the most memorable fictional character to ever walk the daily comics.

The theme of this year’s Annual August Chalkoff is comic strip characters who existed before lightning struck: all those brick-throwing mice and unruly street kids, those hard-nosed Dicks and valiant princes. Get out your chalks and draw me an early 20^th century comic strip character. Contestants will be graded on originality, aesthetics, and whether or not the scene they draw is funny and/or has an interesting narrative element.

The Prizes:

1^st place: a video iPod, audiobooks of HEART-SHAPED BOX and 20^TH CENTURY GHOSTS, plus a signed copy of the LOCKE & KEY hardcover.

2^nd place & 3^rd place: signed copies of the LOCKE & KEY hardcover.

4^th & 5^th: a signed comic.

Now take note folks: this is not a fucking sweepstakes. You do not all have an equal chance of winning. It’s a test of cunning and skill and those who know how to draw have a cruel advantage (although the ingenious may be able to find ways to work around their limitations). Shane and I will be judging this thing, and we are unfair and capricious judges. Most who enter will lose. The race goes not always to the swift, etc., etc.

RULES

You are allowed to send more than one entry. However, you will be judged based only on your most recent entry.

An entry consists of a single “panel” or image.

Can your submission, featuring a pre-1950s comic strip character, include modern elements? In other words, can you draw the Katzenjammer Kids as George Bush and Dick Cheney? Absolutely. Even better. As a rule, Shane and I are unlikely to hold your creativity against you.

You may send a digital picture of your entry to chalkoff at joehillfiction dot com. You may also e-mail a link to a flickr or other photo sharing site. You’re free to post your images on the message board, but that won’t count as a valid entry.

If you don’t own a digital camera, and/or can’t figure out how to give us a digital image, e-mail us at the chalkoff address, and we’ll give you a snail mail address where you can send your submission.

Professional artists are allowed to enter. However, current employees of IDW or HarperCollins, and artists who have worked with me in the past, are not eligible for any of the prizes.

Your judges reserve the right not to award all the prizes, if we feel there aren’t five entries up to snuff. We had a very small number of entries last year, and this year’s contest is more challenging, so it is very possible the contest will conclude with less than five prizewinners. Don’t like it? That and a quarter will get you a half hour psychological therapy session with Lucy van Pelt.

You are expected to draw on some stretch of pavement or sidewalk. However, last year we received one chalk entry on black paper, and accepted it, so we’re flexible.

Contest ends August 31^st, at midnight, Eastern Standard Time.

How many will really enter? In 2007 we had less than 25 valid entries, making this the easiest iPod to win on the web. I’m betting we double our entries this year, but owing to the increased complexity of the challenge, I could be wrong. In any event, it’s clear that it’s wildly stupid not to enter… what do you have to lose?

That’s it guys. Go get your chalk on.

More American than the fourth of July, sweeter than Ma’s apple pie. The chalkoff is only four weeks away. Will YOU be ready?

I had a chance to read at Borders Books in Bangor a few days ago (where the message board was well represented… thanks for coming out guys), and while I was there I came across a surprising artifact. They had a display of the new Sony eBook Reader, with one of them switched on to allow customers to play around with it. So I read about two paragraphs of the story on the screen… before realizing I was looking at my story, “Pop Art.”

So maybe now is a good time to mention that the new Sony Reader comes preloaded with “Pop Art” already on it – something I knew had been set up, but had kind of forgotten about. It was quite a charge to come across one in the wild with that story already cued up on it. Anyone ever played around with one of these? Any thoughts about eBook readers, pro or con? On the plus side, it looks like a pretty sweet piece of gear. On the down side, I imagine myself in an airport reading the last 30 pages of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows… and then the screen begins to blink LOW BATTERY, before blanking out and going dead. Something which will never happen with a hardcover.

There have been a few questions lately about the awards for the chalkoff, such as: where the hell are they, writer boy? Most of the prizes will ship today if I can get to the Post Office. The only thing that won’t go out are copies of “The Saved” for the simple reason that PS Publishing doesn’t have them ready yet. But everything else will be in the mail and on its way to the winners shortly.

Over on the message board, the unstoppable Dana Jean has started a kind of virtual book club, to talk about the stories in 20th Century Ghosts. I’m going to stay out of it – if someone wants to say they hated a story, they should be able to do so without being afraid the author is going to leap in to furiously defend his bruised ego. But I did think that I could say a few things about each story here on the blog, as it comes up in discussion over there. I’m thinking, like, three sentences. This week they’re talking about “Best New Horror,” the story that opens the book, so here are three sentences about that:

1. I stuck “Best New Horror” up at the front of the book because I thought it could serves as a kind of thesis statement for the rest of the collection – I saw it as a chance to spout off about horror’s unique power as a genre, and its place in the larger literary landscape.

2. Also when I wrote it, I was finishing up the collection, and I felt strongly that 20th Century Ghosts needed a story with some inbred chainsaw murderers in it.

3. As Val points out, the story features the word “twat.”

See, wasn’t that enlightening?

It’s over.

My thanks to everyone who took my goofy idea – to spend an afternoon out in the driveway/sidewalk, recreating an image from a classic 80s arcade game in chalk – and ran with it. Shane and I found something to impress or amuse or entertain in just about every pixel-tastic entry. The judging was difficult, but now is done, and we have reached our conclusions.

And the winning entry is:

- lovingly illustrated by K. from Indiana. Just looking at this frighteningly accurate depiction of Dirk the Daring from Dragon’s Lair, makes me want to shout: “Hurrmph! Gleee! Whazoo!”

K. from Indiana, I’ve got your address, and will be mailing you your prize (iPod with audiobook), as soon as the audiobook is available. Congratulations!

Prizes were also promised to four runner-ups. They were:

2nd Place, Rampage, by R.

3rd Place, Kung Fu Master, by C. (Pop over to the Wikipedia entry on Kung Fu Master if you don’t remember the game, and stare in awe at the accuracy of this chalk rendering).

4th Place, Tempest, by L.

5th Place, Donkey Kong jr., by N.

If I don’t have addresses for you already, I’ll be in touch with you soon to get them so I can mail you your prizes.

There were several other entries that only narrowly missed making this top five. Sympathies to those who didn’t step into the winner’s circle this year… but c’mon back and take another stab this time next year.