THE SUMMER OF POLLS

The time has come, Champions.

Make alliances, draw your battle lines, and prepare yourselves. The 2020 Summer of Polls is upon us!

For the awesome Champions who are new to our community, every year I have an annual “Favorite Shea/Sohma Heroine” and “Favorite Shea/Sohma Hero” poll. Typically I hold them at different times of the year, but for 2020 I decided to go all out and take all of June to hold a new poll each week! You’ll get a chance to vote for your favorite hero, heroine, animal sidekick character, and more!

If the idea of having to choose your favorite character sounds awful, fret not! For each poll I’ll give you multiple votes–although you only get to complete the poll and cast your ballot once, so choose carefully!

The polls are fun for all of us, but I do actually use your feedback for work purposes, too. (It helps me decide who you would enjoy getting freebies about, what books I should put on sale, and more!) So I want to give a big thank you in advance for participating!

The polls will begin next week Monday, where I’ll be kicking off the with “Favorite Heroine” poll, so come ready! Until then, thanks for reading!

2019 Reader Survey

The time has come for the 2019 Reader Survey!

For those who are new to the community, every year I hold a reader survey compiled by my team and I (in this case me, Rockstar-Assistant-Meg, and Myrrhlynn). The Survey is really important because it gives you Champions the chance to let your voices be heard, and it gives my team a sort of community checkup. We take the answers and comments you give us and hold meetings, in which we discuss our plans for the next year–specifically things like events, future books, etc. (That’s actually why we’re holding this now, at a somewhat inconvenient time since it messes up my Reign of Magic theme, but we’ve got our planning meetings coming up so we need your input!)

Yes, you read that right! Your answers will have an impact on our plans for 2020–that’s why we really want you to take it! It should only take a few minutes–all the answers are multiple choice/select all that apply this year–but we really appreciate your input.

AND! To sweeten the deal, if you fill out the reader survey, once you complete it you’ll be given a link for the 2019 Heroine Interview! The interview will eventually be put up on the website–you can expect to see it pop up around Christmas time–but you can get it now if you help us out and complete the survey.

CLICK HERE to take the survey–which will close Sunday, October 27th!

Thanks so much, Champions!

2019 Heroine Poll Results

In September I held my annual Heroine Poll, and gave you champions five votes to pick your favorite K. M. Shea Heroines. Over 1,200 Champions voted in this poll, so a big thank you to everyone who participated! Now, for the results.

Smashing all previous records and taking first place by a huge gap is Angelique, with 735 votes! This is big because it means over half of all the Champions who participated voted for Angel. I can’t tell you how humbled and overjoyed I am that you Champions love her that much. Hopefully you’ll only like her more as she continues to let her sarcasm leak through!

Kit of Second Age of Retha took second place with 598 votes–a healthy lead over our third place winner, Rakel of the Snow Queen who snagged 553 votes. Fourth place was won by Quinn of Twelve Dancing Princesses with 515 votes, and the top five was rounded out with Britt Arthurs of King Arthurs and Her Knights taking fifth place with 501 votes.

After that, the vote count fell pretty drastically, but the votes dividing the heroines was much more hotly contested!

1. 6th place: Gwendafyn of Royal Magic with 387 votes

2. 7th place: Elle of Beauty and the Beast, 346

3. 8th place: Tari of Red Rope of Fate, 286

4. 9th place: Gemma of Rumpeltstilskin, 283

5. 10th place: Cinderella of Cinderella and the Colonel with 257

If you want to see the final break out, you can check out the poll by clicking here!

Originally I was going to wait until we finished the Fairy Tale Enchantress themed blog posts to release this write up, but then I thought it might be nice to talk about it now while we wait for everyone in the community to read Reign of Magic…and then my mind was made up when I saw the results. Angelique aside, the results are still incredibly fascinating, because they somewhat mirror the results of the Hero poll.

The order is mixed up, but with the exception of Angelique, ALL the ladies in the top 10 had their significant others in the top 10 male characters. (As a reminder, Merlin took first, then Emerys, Solus Miles, Stil, Farrin, Benjimir, Friedrich, Arion, Severin, and Asher and Aaron.) Evariste wasn’t in the 2019 Hero Poll because I held it in January, and you didn’t have a chance to “meet” him until February, so he obviously couldn’t be in the top. But I’m willing to bet if I held it now he would bump Asher and Aaron out of place, making the top 10 a perfect reflection–even if the actual character order is different. (And Angelique totally hosed Merlin in the #1 vote department. He had 609 votes to her 735!)

I dug back through to the 2017 Heroine Poll–because we didn’t have one last year since we had our two month long summer reading program! Interestingly, the results are pretty similar. Britt took 1st that time, but Rakel staked her place in second, but Tari, Cinderella, Gemma, and Elle all appeared in the top 10. Dylan of Little Selkie and Raven of Life Reader had both appeared in the top ten, but they’ve fallen as I’ve greatly expanded the list. But hats off to Britt and Rakel for staying in the top five for two years!

In conclusion…I’m not entirely certain what to make of that, but I am grateful that Britt, Gwendafyn, and Tari break up the top 10 so it’s not a fairy tale monopoly. 😉 Once again, a big thank you to everyone who voted! I hope you enjoyed it, Champions, and thank you for reading!

PS: If you want a heroine interview…stay tuned! 😉