Melissa de la Cruz

Mel's Shopping Diary

The Winnahs!! First Batch!

July 21, 2008

As I was judging the poems, trying to figure out the Top 35, I realized I really liked ALL the poems in the Top 55, and that I wanted to honor everyone (and it ended up being a Top 51 since some of the poems were written by the same authors.)

So 25 semi-finalists will receive the chapter sampler AND a lipgloss in “Vixen”! Because you are all vicious vixens!!

Big kisses and congrats to the following:

Diana H., Danny R., Lily C., Byankeegirl28, Cara L., Lauren L., Maddeline V., LehPrincess, AudreyTran, Carolyn L., Nel M., Alysse S., Blair B., Shayla E., Nikki M., xmegggss, Sutton F., Gabrielle C., Tiffany L., Alyson N., Gabrielle S-N., Allison G., Kali O., Hannah W. and Amy S.

Then I ended up with 26 Finalists, 23 of whom will receive the chapter sampler and a lipgloss six-pack “Fiesty Kitten” by Urban Decay! (Mwowwwrrr!)

The top three winners will win, in order: Third Place: $50 Gift Certificate to Sephora.Com, Second Place: $75 Gift Certificate to Sephora.Com, and First Place: $100 Gift Certificate to Sephora.Com. I’m a former beauty editor, and I can’t think of anything more fun than being able to spend money on make-up.

I will be publishing the Top 26 poems every day this week (um, until Thursday, because I’m on vacay on Friday--we’re taking the kid to Disneyland, toodles!)

First off, I really want to thank everyone who submitted a poem. It just blew my mind that there were so many entries (I mean--three hundred!! How fracking cool is that??) And they were all REALLY REALLY good. It was so hard to choose a favorite, even 26! And please know if your poem did not make it into the finals, it does not mean your poem was not good (it was!!!) everything is subjective, and these are the poems that spoke to me the most.

One thing you will notice is a lot of the winners wrote shorter poems, the simpler and more succinct ones had a better chance of winning because it’s just SO MUCH HARDER to make a long poem very good all the way through. Whereas you can really polish a short simple gem of a poem. Also, it’s very hard to write a clever rhyming poem. I also tended to favor poems that had an unexpected POV. A lot of the poems that came in re-told the plot of the books, so the poems that had more of an original viewpoint tended to speak to me more.

Congratulations everyone! You will be receiving instructions in your emails. Thanks for playing and I hope we can do this again soon.

Just a note: I did some minor editing on the poems for clarity purposes.

Today I give you the top poems about Schuyler.
I loved these poems about Schuyler, because I could feel the love the writers had for the character.

I liked the lyricism of this one. It almost reads like a song, it’s so pretty:

Sky

Skin of summer stars
Veins of deepest sapphire blood
Heart of the Angels.

-Melissa C.

I loved the last lines of this one. I also liked the imagery and playing with the colors—in my book the colors are very important aren’t they? ☺

Blue

Green is a powerful color,
The color of emeralds,
The color of money,

The color of envy.
That potent hue surrounds her,
In the inaccessible eyes of her crush,
Replicated in his egotistical, hostile twin.

Flecks of green, in the eyes of her best friend,
Always there to support and soothe.

Green are the eyes in the distance,
In the perfect reflection of her face: her mother.

Not entirely perfect.

This girl has the eyes of a man she never knew,
Her eyes are blue.

-Gabrielle W.

I thought this poem was a neat description of Schuyler’s internal conflict. Very nice:

Split

I’m falling,
Spinning,
Calling,
Your name.

The lights,
The fame,
Am I
The same.

Confusion,
Intrusion,
Real human,
Blue Blood illusion.

My heart’s been,
Shattered,
Broken,
Battered.

It’s splitting,
It’s quitting.
Not that it mattered.

Human.
Angel.
Split in two.
Am I red,
Or am I blue?

-Melissa B.

These next ones are the top haikus. I think it’s so difficult to write a great haiku, and I was really impressed by these.

This first one deals with the thoughts of one of Mimi’s human familiars. I thought it was an original point of view and I liked how simple and resonant it was.

A ceremony,
Ancient and filled with my blood
My last tie to her.
-Katie M.

This one I liked a lot because again, it was simple and succinct, telling a whole story in a few lines. 

Transformation

Memories combine
Drift into another world
Let this life begin.
-Alyssa B.

Yay! And that’s all for today. Look for more winning poems tomorrow!

xoxo
Mel