Autographed IN HER NAME Collection Contest Winner

Well, I have to confess that this contest was quite a bit of fun! I've never run one like that before, but it was entertaining to see the extent to which people will go to win something like this. It'll be even more interesting to see what you're willing to do for the next and final giveaway for the launch of , but I'll cover that a bit later (hint: you WILL want to take part in the contest!)…

But I digress. The response to the "autographed boxed set" IN HER NAME contest was awesome! There were over 330 comments posted by, um, more people than I felt like counting.

At the end of the day, we had four front runners: Jamie Andrews, Daniél Lecoq, Melinda Seigler, and Solace Winter. I was intrigued by their different strategies for cajoling friends over here to vote for them:

Jamie emphasized the family vote, apparently either promising riches or beatings to his various family members and pets to coerce them into voting for him. At one point I had to wonder just how many children and dogs he has in his household. He apparently also has at least a few friends, although the most common term of endearment was "book nerd." Hmm.

Daniél, the clever rascal, focused his campaign on the cat vote, apparently enlisting every cat owner in Sweden and half the European Union to vote on his behalf. Based on the responses, I think Daniél clearly has a promising future career of cat matchmaker, as most cats worldwide apparently will get along with his own dear Blade. And one respondent, in a testament to Blade's social responsibility, reported that the cat didn't drink his beer. That made me wonder just whose beer Blade did drink…

Melinda's strategy began by implying that none of her friends read. Be that as it may, she clearly cornered the "good luck" demographic, with most of her respondents dropping in long enough to hammer out those two words before disappearing back into oblivion. I must say, however, that at least one of her friends is a literary soul whose comment summed up the desperate battle for the prize: "May monkeys defile the corpses of your enemies…"

Solace flogged her Scott Stanford (whoever he is) Fan Club into action with what can only be assumed to be severe consequences should they not flock to support her. Violence was clearly an option, as one respondent claimed to be forced to vote at gunpoint (yes, it WAS a water pistol), while another promised to vote for her in exchange for her not puking on his DVD collection. Of course, there were reprisals on the part of some of the respondents, particularly threats to go running around naked. I really have to wonder about this Scott Stanford Fan Club. They might be worth a horror short story.

Now that I've kept you in suspense long enough, here are the results of my almost-scientific tabulation of the votes. Weeding out duplicates and some other oddities (sorry, next time we do something like this I'll have a better system!), we find that…

…Daniél Lecoq is the winner! It was a close thing between him and Solace, who trailed him by a mere 9 votes. I suspect the Scott Stanford Fan Club is going to be in for some unpleasant DVD-puking-upon. Melinda trailed Solace by 16 votes, and Jamie came in at – amazingly enough – 16 votes behind Melinda.

Of course, this means that I'm going to have to ship this pile of books to Sweden, where Daniél lives with half the country's cat population. Perhaps I'll just deliver the books in person. It would only be a little more expensive than what the post office is going to charge me to ship them!

Anyway, congrats to Daniél, and thanks to everyone for playing!

But before you go, there's more. Barring any more unforeseen delays, I'm planning to release FROM CHAOS BORN on 19 March (for ebooks; print will be a bit later). We will be having a final book launch fun-fest starting on launch day. I'll give out more details in a day or so, but I wanted to let you know that the prize will be one of the following little goodies, winner's choice:

A Kindle Fire
A Nook Tablet (8 GB)

Note: The option of the above prizes is only for U.S. residents. However, if the winner is from outside the U.S., he/she will be eligible to win a $200 gift certificate from an on-line retailer of his/her choice (as long as it's something I can put money into!).

So, STAY IN TOUCH! I'll be posting more here on the blog, Twitter, and pointed hits on Facebook to come here!

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