I haven't been writing up posts to inform all my readers about Alexandria's progress in the tournament so I guess that's what this post is for. It might get a bit lengthy because I'm going to wrap up everything about all of Alex's matches and the tournament in general and how it was to be an advocate.
When I first found out that I was going to become Alex's advocate, I was so excited. You don't even understand. I was fangirling all over the place and being a weirdo and going berserk and all that. I was ecstatic because I enjoyed Half-Blood so much and I truly felt that Alex was the best heroine ever. Okay, maybe I was a bit biased but still.
When the YA Sisterhood put up the bracket for the matches, I found out that Alex's first match was going to be against Nora Grey from Becca Fitzpatrick's Hush, Hush saga. I read those books but I read them for the extremely sexy Patch Cipriano so when I saw that Alex was going up against Nora, I wasn't that worried only because in comparison, I felt that Alex was more kick-ass.
Being an advocate was extremely rewarding yet very draining and tiring all at once. In between each match, you have a week to basically rest up before your next round. Now you think a week is long but on the advocating side, it really isn't. You need time to reach out to others, inform people about the when, where, and what, and just time in general. The hardest part for me during this tournament was writing up my defense post for Alex. The hardest part of the defense post itself was when I sat down to write up the whole thing for the first time.
During the summer, the YA Sisterhood hosted their very first tournament where we featured the hot YA crushes. It was a new thing to me and all the others who advocated so I wasn't really sure what to put in my defense post so I kind of just wrote whatever I thought would work. This time though, I'm not sure if it was just me or what, but the vibe I got was totally different from the tourney that took place during the summertime. So, when it came time for me to submit my post, I was very nervous because I knew a whole lot of people were going to read it and seriously base their votes off of it. And okay, fine, because the author was going to read it too. I sat at the table with my laptop for four hours and worked on that post forever. Time period: 5pm-9pm, to be exact. But after I finished typing everything up and re-reading the post ten times over, I honestly felt like I did a really good job with defending Alex so...I was happy and proud of myself, lol.
When the match day rolled around, it was a school day for me which sort of freaked me out because then I couldn't be online as much to support my gal. But then I thought, "Well, I basically only really need to tweet." And I could do that from my lame phone so that's what I did throughout my school day. Whenever I got a chance, I sent a tweet from my phone from school to try and help garner more Alex votes. But even when I got home, I didn't tweet or advocate as much because like I had stated above, I felt that Alex had this match in the bag. Nonetheless, you don't want to underestimate your opponent because you'll never know how it's going to go down.
Another thing as an advocate: stay away from the poll/match/site/post/whatever because if you don't, I promise you'll go insane. It's nerve wracking to sit there at your computer, constantly refreshing the page to keep an eye on the votes. Yes, I know this because when I advocated for Patch (ironic, huh?), in his very first match, it was exciting stuff, so me, with no life, did just that. But as a sort of veteran to the tourney, there's no point in doing that because you honestly can't do more than tweet on your match day. I've learned my lesson.
Alex's first match in the tourney was on Monday, December 12th. The voting post went live at 9pm my time on Sunday, December 11th, so that meant I had a few hours to get people to vote before I had to get to bed. The following day, I tweeted a bit here and there and when I got home, I checked the post a bit and found that Alex was in the lead. When 9pm on Monday rolled around, it turned out that Alex was the victor in the match against Nora. Now all this didn't happen by pure magic. Lots of things had to happen for Alex to win.
For example, the amazing, wonderful, fantastic, brilliant, and awesome Jennifer L. Armentrout offered up some juicy incentives that were just way to hard to pass up. In Alex's first round, she kept the incentives to a minimum and that was enough to drive people crazy. We had talked about gathering people to take part in the Deity cover reveal. Basically what happened was that I had a group of people help out in revealing the cover on their blogs on the same day that Alex's match went down to generate more votes. She also offered up a sexy, extra scene between Alex and Aiden that occured sometime between Half-Blood and Aiden. The appeal in that incentive, if you need one, was that it happened somewhere
between book one and two, which meant that it wouldn't be in either book, which meant we needed to know what happened between Alex and Aiden. And with that, Alex was victorious. If you have yet to read the scene, you can do so by checking it out
here.
I wasn't expecting JLA (Jennifer L. Armentrout) to post the scene so fast so when she did, I was at school and I didn't have access to view it because my school has this thing where it disables certain sites and all that. Anyway, I tweeted JLA and asked her to email it to me because you know, I wanted to read and find out what sort of hot and heavy went down with those two. When I received the email, I tried so hard to not hyperventilate in class because...that would have just been all bad. You should have seen my face; I was all smiles, from ear to ear. I was pretty sure I was getting some funky looks from other fellow classmates. Let me tell you, the scene was so hot and heavy, I felt like I was reading or doing something totally illegal. I know, it was that good. If you haven't read it, well you totally should.
After Alex made it through her first round in the tournament, her fan base started to grow and it was...necessary because in her second round, she was up against the powerhouse, Rosemarie Hathaway from Richelle Mead's Vampire Academy series on Friday, December 23rd. Now let me just say, I was utterly torn and distraught over this match because I love Rose so much. She, along with Alex and Ellie (Angelfire) were my top choices at being an advocate for. And it just kept getting harder and tougher because Rose's advocates were Jaime and Patricia - awesome blogger friends of mine that I love as well.
I knew that this match was going to make or break Alex so I went to work on trying to get more people to vote for Alex. What I did was...hard work, if I may say so myself, lol. On the Friday after Alex's first match on 12/12, this idea slammed my brain and I sent out multiple tweets that if people wanted to help out with this
thing that I had planned for them to email me. I got a few takers from twitter but I remembered that I also had the google doc. for when people signed up to help out in the Deity cover reveal so I figured that was enough people. I emailed multiple people and in that email I had asked these takers if they wanted to write up a mini defense post for Alex. Many replied back, agreeing to help and it made me so happy. But the mini defense post wasn't all that I had them include in their post.
Like I said, I knew that Alex versus Rose was going to be one helluva match, so I decided to host a giveaway where I was going (and still am) to give away one copy of Daimon, Half-Blood, and Pure to one lucky person. The give away is still going and it ends on Friday, January 6th, 2012 - the last day of the entire Heroine Tournament. If you haven't entered and you would like to, you can fill out the form
here.
And as if that wasn't enough motive to get one to vote for Alex, JLA offered up some even more amazing incentives that just blew my head right off. For this round, she broke down the rewards according to how many votes Alex received.
500 VOTES: If Alex reaches 500 votes, I will give you a juicy scene from Pure. It involves a pool, but will be edited to avoid spoilers.
750 VOTES: If Alex gets 750 votes, I will give you Chapter 16 from Half-Blood in Aiden's POV. Yes, that chapter.
1000 VOTES: If Alex gets 1000 votes, I will give you Chapter 26 from Obsidian in Daemon's POV.
Yes, that chapter.
WINNING VOTES: If Alex wins against Rose, I will write a very lengthy scene/basically a freaking novella from Aiden's POV about a trip he and Leon took that involved searching down a certain daimon that got away at the end of Half-Blood. Now. If she wins, all of this will take me some time, of course.
As you can see, there are some links that I left there...so clearly Alex won her match against Rose because we got all the incentives but I honestly have to say, I did not expect her to win. I mean, come on, Rose has an enormous fan base and many, many, many fan sites and supporters world wide, hence all the incentives and motives. Seriously, it was by some miracle that we won.
I also have to say that I have never been more excited and tense and depressed and moody and gloomy all in one day. I jumped back and forth between those emotions all day. The match was crazy intense because all day, the votes kept jumping back and forth in favor of Rose and then Alex and then back to Rose and then back to Alex and....it was just hard to watch. Luckily, that day I went to the mall with my sister for some very last minute Christmas shopping, haha. But then again, thankfully I had my sister's iphone where I did a lot of my tweeting and retweeting. I swear, I was the Queen of Retweets that day.
Also, on that Friday, my sisters and I got together to do a mini Christmas dinner. They were getting so annoyed at seeing my fingers and eyes glued to either a laptop or iphone so an hour before the votes were closed, I got off, and stopped tweeting completely. I figured that since the votes were so close to one another, it was going to be like that until the end. And let me just mention that twitter jail sucks butt. For those of you who don't know what that is, it's what happens when you tweet too much in a certain period, say if you tweeted non-stop for an hour, twitter will basically kick you out and not let you tweet for at least an hour or even 24 hours as some have told me.
Anyway, at 8:55pm, I got on my lame phone and alerted everyone that the last five minutes are what counts and then all these tweets were coming in and my phone...poor thing...was ringing non-stop. Finally, I was able to read one tweet that said Alex won. I was so blown away. I couldn't believe it. LIKE SERIOUSLY?! Yeah, it was pretty amazing. Actually, because the votes kept swaying back and forth, I was starting to think that I didn't care if Alex won or not because I was thinking of what was to come if she went up against her next opponet.
But out of all of Alex's matches, the one where she went up against Rosemarie was definitely my favorite because 1.) both gals put up an amazing fight, 2.) it was super friendly and fun, 3.) the support that came from boths sides was unbelievable, 4.) it was crazy intense, 5.) it was challenging, and 6.) it went exactly how it would have gone if Alex and Rose were in a real life, fictional battle - head to head, where one wasn't falling completely behind. Man, if only Alex and Rose could meet in real life.
Anyway, after round two, I was mentally exhausted and oh so tired. In that round, I set up my giveaway, I got twenty-six blogs to help spread the word about Alex's match, and JLA came up with some bomb ass incentives. When I discovered that Alex was pitted up against Katniss in her third round, I had the biggest feeling that she wasn't going to make it past, but I had hope because I felt like that going into her match against Rose and what do you know? She came out victorious.
When it came time to turn in my defense post, I was more stuck than ever. I had the hardest time writing why everyone should vote for Alex instead of Katniss. That part nearly killed me. I also wasn't sure if JLA was going to do anymore incentives. Because I was like, "Can we out do ourselves?!" And well, hello people, it's JLA! Of course she can out do herself! In this round, she came up with even more fantabulous incentives. When she was dm'ing them to me, I was getting so excited! I then reached out to my group of Alex supporters and let them in on all the good stuff and got their help, yet again. The incentives were:
WINNING VOTES: a teaser from Pure, Shadows, Onyx, and Cursed
CLOSING POST: JLA wrote up an awesome closing along with an amazing giveaway
And for every 1,000 votes, JLA was going to give away an ARC of Pure. We only reached 1,000+ votes so only one person received an ARC. Above, you will be able to find the links back to every single teaser that JLA had written up for us.
That wasn't even all of them. Five hours before the actual match went live, JLA and I had planned this little thing where JLA would host a live chat where all of us could get together and get pumped and excited. That was absolutely the way to kick off the match for us Alex lovers. We all got together and came and chatted (is that even a word?) with everyone and our morale was boosted, we were confident, and uber excited. And for the record, let me just say that for the first five minutes, Alex was in the lead. I don't care that she lost but just know that for the first five minutes, Alex dominated!
In Alex's match against Katniss, she didn't win but in all reality, Alex and Half-Blood won an even greater victory which was gaining new readers and an even bigger fan base. That made all of this worthwhile to me. During my time advocating, I received multiple tweets/blog comments from people telling me that because of my tweets, my euthusiasm, and my defense post, they wanted to read Half-Blood and/or that they voted for Alex. Whenever I got one of those, my insides did little flip-flops, my heart got all warm and fuzzy, and I was all smiles.
At the end of the day, reaching out to new readers of amazing books is what it's really all about. Finding people to discover a book that brought you joy and happiness is the greatest victory that you can achieve from this tournament and I believe we did exactly that.
We. Ha, if you haven't realized, I said we quite a bit. And hello, of course I absolutely did not do all of this by myself. That's like asking for a death wish. At the very beginning of this tourney, I knew that it was important to have a place on twitter where all of Alex's supporters could go and rally together. When I was Patch's advocate, I came up with the hashtag → #PatchArmy. In regular text, that stands for Patch's Army. I didn't include the ' or the s in there because it would mess up the hashtag, so it became the #PatchArmy. At the very beginning of this tourney, like I said, I knew I should come up with something unique that was all ours, a hashtag we didn't have to share with other twitter users that knew nothing about this tournament. I, being the crazy that I am, thesaurus'd words that had the same meaning as army and a bunch of words came up. I was immediately drawn to legion because...well, because of the movie LEGION, lol. I'm so lame. Anyway, the we that I keep referring to is the...
#HALFBLOODLEGION
Okay, here comes my little speech. I'll try not to get all choked up and teary eyed. ;) I don't have the words to express how much all of your support meant to me. It wouldn't even be right if I said it meant the world and more...because that would just be inadequate. All of your tweets, your blog posts, your twitter avatars, all of it made me so happy and proud and more happy. It was crazy to see how much support Alex has and for that, I am grateful. Alex and JLA deserves all of it. All the love, all the tweets, all the support, all the everything!
Because of this tournament, I have made so many new amazing friends and for that, I feel like a winner. It was so heart-warming to me when I saw everyone retweeting each other's tweets. When my timeline flooded with purple-y awesomeness, I was like, "Yep, the #HalfBloodLegion gon run this town!" Like I had also said on twitter, the #HalfBloodLegion can spread stuff like wildfire and one of the highlights for me from the #HalfBloodLegion was our giveaway hashtag → #SPARTA. That will forever remain special in my heart. Only we get what that means and it's super high larious and totally our little inside joke. If you haven't read Half-Blood and you're laughing at us like, "Those dorks! Sparta has nothing to do with anything about Half-Blood!" Well, you know what, too bad for you because...it
totally has something to do with Half-Blood and its legion!
I don't even know how to say thank you anymore. I feel like I've been saying it so much that it means nothing now. Someone should come up with a new word...or words for thank you. Honestly and seriously, from the very bottom of my heart up to the curves at the top, thank you to each and every single one of you! And because I feel like you guys all deserve one heckuva shout-out, below you will find many, and I mean many, twitter links to people who are part of the #HalfBloodLegion.
and last but not least, the amazing lady who started this all,
I know I totally forgot a whole load of you guys so if you are part of the #HalfBloodLegion and would like to be added to the list, let me know! :) Seriously, thank you so much! Every single one of you! I love you guys!
Also, because I'm crazy and wanted to keep the #HalfBloodLegion alive, if you have a blog and you know...wanna sport the love of the legion on your page, grab a button below!
And if you read to the bottom of this entire post on New Year Eve's, you rock the hardest! Because to be honest, when I previewed this post, I was annoyed with myself and didn't even read the whole thing. I mean, writing it already took forever, lol. So that brings me to grammar errors and such. If there are any, well please excuse them because I typed this whole post up around 5-8am this morning, haha!
Happy New Year from me to you. I wish you all the best wishes for the new year!
And what was actually right."
