Hey guys, do you remember this? I’m kicking off my “Be Mysterious: Writers in Masks” series again. I loved it dearly, and it had a great nine month run before I shut it down. I miss the fanciful and frightening things that you came up with. If you’re new to the series, welcome! I’d love you to participate! If you have already been featured, I’d love to feature you again. Either send in something new or ask me to rerun your old piece. I would be more than happy to. The guidelines can be found below. Thank you!

So if you have to blame somebody, blame Natalie Sin. Come on, it’s easy. I blame her all of the time! My daughter is so into dancing boys in bunny suits, now. Thanks to Sin herself, I may be raising a Furry. But I digress.

We were talking about online personas and how we want our authors and artists to be informative, approachable, and yet mysterious. Natalie commented that writers should all wear masks. And that sparked my muse.

I love masks. They’re designed to conceal. They’re designed to enhance. They’re sexy, mysterious, and a bit ominous. They can be playful. They can be whimsical. They can be dark.

Take it a step deeper. We all wear masks. How many people know who we truly are? Doesn’t “who we truly are” change with each person that we’re with? But that is a different discussion for a different day.

I would like all of us as writers and artists to take a picture of ourselves in some sort of mask. It can be a literal mask, and actually that would be preferable because wouldn’t that just be fantastic?? But it can be any other type of mask. I don’t care if you draw a picture of yourself, create something digitally, or put a paper bag on your head. I would just like a picture of you in a mask, a blurb about your work, and permission to run it. I’ll run a picture a week and spotlight you. This will give you an opportunity to be creative and also to promote your work somewhere besides your own site, and it will satiate my craving for the mysterious and delightful.

Besides, masked people are hot.

Feel free to email your pictures and blurbs to me at mercedesyardley(at)gmail(dot)com. Make your pics as simple or dramatic as you want, but keep them G-rated, please. I don’t want to be clawing out my eyes at my own site. Rock on!