Tournament of Heroines Round 1 starts at midnight!--NO, IT HAS BEGUN!
Aura Salvatore (whose last name means "savior," have I ever mentioned that? No? Hmm, now seems like a good time), the main character in the Shade trilogy, is competing in YA Sisterhood's Tournament of Heroines, a March Madness-style elimination tournament to determine the favorite female lead in YA literature.
For making the tournament, I promised that Logan would write Aura a song. He's been working very hard on this, and gotten a little help from one of Aura's biggest, um, advocates (subtle hint there.) The song will be revealed during Round One, which begins...
...at midnight EST tonight! is now ongoing!
Her advocate is the luminous, hilarious Brooke of Brooke Reports book blog, where you can find tons of clever avatars to support Aura during the tournament. More will be popping up there during the day.
Aura is facing a very tough competitor in Kaylee Cavanaugh from the fabulous Soul Screamers series, written by not just one of my favorite writers, but one of my favorite people, Rachel Vincent.
Voting continues for 24 hours, and during that time I'll be tweeting some SHINElines here and there, just for fun. Zachary's gotten the bulk of them so far, so these'll be all Aura quips.
And now, the obligatory bribes incentives:
1) SOMETHING FOR AURA. If Aura wins, Zachary will create his own homage to Aura. It’ll involve music, but it won’t be a song. All I can tell you is that it’ll be…cosmic. (Ooh, look, another subtle hint!)
2) SOMETHING FOR GOOD. For every 100 votes Aura receives (up to 1000 votes), I’ll donate $10 to the Edgar Allen Poe Society of Baltimore to help them keep open the Poe House. Due to budget cutbacks, they're in serious danger of having to shut down this historic landmark, which was featured in SHADE (here's the attic bedroom where Poe once lived and where Zachary hit his head on the ceiling), and, hmmm, just might make a reappearance in SHINE. Without outside help, the Poe House will be closed in June 2012.
John Cusack says noooooooo!
If you’d like to pledge your own donation for the tournament, fill out this form. (More information on the threatened Poe House closing.)
3) SOMETHING FOR YOU – Admit it, this is what you’ve been skimming the entry for. One of the incentives for the Crush Tourney final round was listing Team Kilt members' names in the acknowledgments of SHINE. Almost 200 names will appear, and I’m grateful to each of you.
It's nice to see your name in print in the acknowledgments, but how would you like to have your name in the story itself?
SHINE's copyeditor noticed that two completely unrelated people had the same last name, for no apparent reason. Oops! I had to do something to fix this. Since I suck at coming up with names for minor characters, I'm copping out and naming one of them after YOU.
The contest winner can choose to give their name to:
a) last year’s senior class president
OR
b) a shade
One wreaks serious physiological and psychological damage, and the other goes to Harvard.
You can name the character after yourself or a loved one (ooh, a lovely holiday gift!). If the winner is under 18 years old, he or she must have parental permission.
To enter this Be a Character contest, go to the Aura vs. Kaylee tournament post between midnight tonight and tomorrow, vote for Aura, and leave a comment containing the phrase "AuraFTW" (FTW = "For the Win") on the tournament match's post. Including "AuraFTW" will make it easier for me to do a search on the page to find the entries.
***If you are the FIRST COMMENT on the entire post, you get TEN EXTRA ENTRIES in both this contest and the one below, so be ready to vote and comment right at midnight!***
Also, please keep all comments positive and fun--no bashing allowed. If you need convincing (which I know you don't), please read my R-E-S-P-E-C-T post from Friday.
4) SOMETHING ELSE FOR YOU
*waves ARC of SHINE*
YES! If Aura wins--and only if Aura wins--I will give an ARC of SHINE to one of the entrants in the Be a Character contest above. No need to do anything extra except GOTV (Get Out The Vote). Tell your friends, family, coworkers, and random folks on the street.
ARCs of Shine are extremely rare. There are only five left. See yesterday's blog post for details on how you can win one of these five.
Winner(s) will be announced here on the blog on Friday, December 16. If I can't reach you to get a mailing address by Friday, December 23, I'll pick another winner.
Join us on Twitter at 11pm Eastern tonight for a very special #SHADEboys chat. Logan and Zachary will be taking questions about Aura (sorry, questions like, "Zachary, what would Aura say if I asked her what you wear under your kilt?" do not count). Can't wait to see if they get the answers right.
AND...last but definitely not least:
A special surprise guest will be joining the chat around 11:30pm.
A VERY. SPECIAL. HEROIC. GUEST.
(Shh...don't tell Logan and Zachary.)
Have fun voting, and THANKS!
Labels: Heroine Tourney, twitter
14 Comments:
Posted by:
Aydrea at 12/13/2011 8:16 AM
Posted by:
Kimberly Callegan at 12/13/2011 10:13 AM
Posted by:
TracyH at 12/13/2011 1:13 PM
Posted by:
Julie@My5monkeys at 12/13/2011 1:36 PM
Posted by:
Jeri at 12/13/2011 7:26 PM
Posted by:
Christine Manzari at 12/14/2011 12:02 AM
Posted by:
Vivien at 12/14/2011 1:09 AM
Posted by:
Anonymous at 12/14/2011 1:42 AM
Posted by:
Renee at 12/14/2011 10:52 AM
Posted by:
TracyH at 12/14/2011 11:51 AM
Posted by:
Ki tsuna at 12/14/2011 7:13 PM
Posted by:
Julie@My5monkeys at 12/14/2011 7:24 PM
Posted by:
Heather (Book-Savvy) at 12/15/2011 10:10 AM
Heather: Yes, lots of people said it was a shame they couldn't both advance. Just the bad luck of the draw. A lot of readers were torn between the two heroines, and certainly I did not enjoy having to go up against my friend Rachel (well, I enjoyed it in terms of having fun, but I couldn't really get my game face on against people I love).
Posted by:
Jeri at 12/15/2011 1:48 PM
Post a Comment