Jeri Smith-Ready

Sigh, I just deleted an anonymous comment that read, "Will and St. Clair both should've won." or something like that. I've reset the blog to not accept anonymous comments, like most blogs, but I shouldn't have deleted the disgruntled comment, I should've addressed it.

Yes, Will and St. Clair (especially Will) each come from books that are more popular than SHADE. But this isn't a matchup of book sales, just like the March Madness tournament isn't decided by who has the best regular season record.

The Crush tournament is decided by the passion and dedication of the books' readers who happen to know about the tournament. Usually via Twitter.

In my case, I've been blessed, first and foremost, with an amazing set of advocates in Fictitious Delicious. Many people commented that they hadn't read either book in each match, but they voted for Zach because of FD's awesome poems.

FD also recruited people to join Team Kilt, made a great button, and wrote a rhyme using members' usernames. They made it fun! I threw in incentives of teasers, etc., as did other authors.

So everyone relax. It's just for fun. If it were all decided by book sales, YA Sisterhood could've just put Peeta and Edward in the final and let them duke it out.

Oh wait--Peeta and Edward lost in their first matchups. Because they were up against characters with VERY passionate fan bases.

And that's what the tourney is all about--readers and their passion for books.

Posted by:  Jeri at 7/26/2011 2:57 PM

OK, I'm a complete dork, but it really bugged me that the style sheet made it say "1 Comments". So now there are two, and grammatical righteousness has been restored. *whew*

Posted by:  Jeri at 7/26/2011 3:15 PM

Payoff - incentive....let's not quibble over words :-) I just want my Logan.

And as for the comment I agree - this is for FUN. If you're able to rally the troops for your guy then so be it. I think all of my faves lost so far.

Everyone is doing a great job no matter what team they represent.

Posted by:  Karen at 7/26/2011 3:18 PM

Totally. I meant no disrespect to the advocates of those who lost. I was pointing out that the most obvious victors (from mega-mega-MEGA-popular works like Twilight and Hunger Games) could still lose to boys from less well-known books.

It's the same in the NCAA's. The statistical favorites don't always win. Which is fortunate for those of us who, um, don't care for Duke.

Posted by:  Jeri at 7/26/2011 3:26 PM

I agree! Ficticious Delicious are such great advocates! I'm SO glad Zachary won, but I'm torn in the next tournament's choices. D:

Posted by:  Diana Julianna at 7/26/2011 3:26 PM

This reminds me of when the brackets were first formed, and I saw that Zach was up against Will. I was like, well, it's a wonderful honor to be in, but he has no chance.

And one of the YA Sisterhood said, "Zachary doesn't have to be more popular than Will. He just has to be more popular than Will FOR ONE DAY."

OK, I'll shut up now. Off to finally see Harry Potter! Eee!

Posted by:  Jeri at 7/26/2011 3:31 PM

Julianna, I'm torn, too! Tod versus Michael? Seriously, universe, you're doing THAT to me?

Posted by:  Jeri at 7/26/2011 3:31 PM

Jeri--

I'm so sorry about the disgruntled comment you had. We've had our share of them at the YA Sisterhood. But you are absolutely right! If the tournament was truly about the most popular character winning, we would have done the tournament without letting people vote, and just decided the winners ourselves. The tournament is meant to be a total celebration of not just amazing characters, but amazing fans, and amazing authors. Otherwise we wouldn't have bothered with having fans write up defenses.

Perhaps the best example of this is the fact that the characters seeded #1, 3,4, and 5 are all already out of the tournament.

Good luck tomorrow against Hale! Here's hoping people realize that this tournament is meant to be fun!

Posted by:  Brittany Howard at 7/26/2011 4:19 PM

Jeri, your books are so awesome and I think that one of the things that this tournament has done is let more readers know about other books they may not have heard of. I know that I for one still have a lot of reading to do to cover all of the great characters that are being represented in the tourney.

I have also loved to see all the passion that has gone into the tourney and I've been absolutely delighted by those authors that have supported their characters by doing tweets, retweets, posts and in some cases teaser incentives.

I am so sorry that people feel the need to come bash anyone let alone the author. It just shows poor judgement.

I will keep supporting Zach in this tourney until the end or until he faces Ash (sorry but I am repping him)if it should come to that. lol Of course that this doesn't mean I will stop loving Zach in any way:)

Thanks again for being such a gracious author and person.

Posted by:  Patricia M at 7/26/2011 6:20 PM

Jeri, you are fantastic and I agree entirely with you! As a former advocate (Vincent was out in the first round *sigh*, though I fought heartily for him), I'm still happy to cheer on other favorites-- I went from supporting my book-mate (Team Jules, woo!)to full-on TeamKilt support. This is fun and all of the characters are fantastic (though none can rock a kilt as nicely as Zach.)

This could have been yet another one of those popularity vote tourneys that flood the web. Instead, the advocates, authors, and (especially) the YASisterhood have turned this into a wonderful environment where we could socialize, have a lot of fun, and get the word out about all of these fantastic YA books (and their crushworthy gents!) Thank YOU for the fun incentives-- can't wait for the twitter-goodness tommorrow-- and thanks to Ficticious Delicious for the awesome rhyme and fighting tweets!

And thanks to the YASisterhood for making this happen. I can't imagine how many hours that they've put into this!

Posted by:  Issy at 7/26/2011 9:20 PM

This comment has been removed by the author.

Posted by:  Issy at 7/26/2011 9:20 PM