And we have a winner!
Okay, technically we have two winners, which is even better!
When my editor, Susan, came up with the idea to ask you, the fans, to help give a title to the next hardback Anita Blake novel, I thought, “Okay, that’ll be fun.” I had no idea how enthusiastic your help would be. *laughs* Eight thousand-two-hundred and fifty-four; wait, lets see that in numeral form: 8,254. Six hundred pages, yes you read that right, 600 pages of entries were received. There was a glitch in the spacing and for a bit it was 1,200 pages; wow! Ah, gremlins. Those numbers were just between 2:40pm on Monday, September 8th and 8am on Friday, September 12th, some of you kept posting ideas after that, but in fairness to those that made the deadline, we considered only those that made the time frame as stated. That amazing number doesn’t count how many people gave multiple ideas per each entry. Media Minion Jess estimates it would be well over nine thousand if every idea was counted separately. Thank you to everyone who participated, you are all awesome! I mean that, I am continually floored about how much you love my writing, my characters, and my worlds; thank you.
I personally went through the lists after Jess weeded out repetitions, or things that were inappropriate (you know who you are). She left some in that were just fun, but couldn’t work as the book title. Some of those made me laugh out loud, for real, and some of you wrote essays about why your entry should win, or just your reasoning behind your choice. There were a lot of repeated ideas and in that case the person who got the title in earliest got to be the one that was considered. Some title ideas just didn’t work for this Anita Blake novel, but will go in a file for possible later use. If I use your idea later, I’ll mention it. Some titles will work better for short stories than novels, you can be longer, or more esoteric, when it’s not smacked across the front of the cover. Who knows maybe one of the saved more short story friendly titles will inspire a brand new story, again, if that happens I’ll let you know who got to play muse for me. đŸ™‚
Without further ado, here are the winners:
Next Anita Blake hardback novel – Dead Ice.
Thanks to Peter Orca for that one.
Jewelry store creating Anita and Jean-Claude’s rings: Étoile du Soir, which is French for Evening Star, or Star of Evening.
Thanks to Isis Maria Hess for the name.
Étoile du Berger is also listed as a synonym, but it translates to guiding star, so I stuck with the original entry of Étoile du Soir. Anyone who is a native French speaker, particularly France as opposed to Canada, if you find anything incorrect in the above, please say something soon. There is still time to make changes to the actual manuscript, but the title is set today; why?
The first two chapters and a partial chapter three of Dead Ice will be in the back of Jason coming December 2, 2014. Jason went to the printers today, and the Dead Ice excerpt is in the back of it. You get a brand new adventure featuring Jason, with more on stage time for Jade than ever before, in time for the holidays, plus the beginning of the next adventure; how cool is that?
Both our winners will get a signed edition of Dead Ice as soon as I have them in my hot little hands. They will also be listed in the acknowledgements of the book. Thanks again to everyone who participated, you guys rock!