The DABWAHA first-round matchups are set, and to put it bluntly, I’m facing a world of hurt.
A Lady Awakened is up against Courtney Milan’s The Duchess War, and Courtney is an established DABWAHA powerhouse. She’s like Gonzaga basketball: it doesn’t matter where she’s seeded; she is going to be a factor.
A Gentleman Undone faces Julie Anne Long’s A Notorious Countess Confesses…which was voted Best Romance of 2012 in All About Romance’s reader poll. Not just Best Historical, but Best Romance, period.
So, yeah, I’m facing a good chance of an ignominious early double exit.
But it’s an intriguing and fairly elegant set of matchups! Lady and Duchess both happen to feature some cringeworthy bad sex, and yesterday on Twitter Courtney challenged me to a Bad-Sex-Off. I don’t even know what that is, but I said sure. Because, bad sex? I’m there!
Gentleman and Countess both feature fallen-women heroines who wind up with deeply decent men, which also sets up an interesting duel.
And a whole separate level of intrigue is the fact that my two books are adjacent to each other in the bracket. That means if I win one of my two matchups, I’ll be facing either Duchess or Countess in two consecutive rounds. And if by some crazy chance I should happen to win both, I’d be squaring off against myself in round two. Which would mean some epic, split-personality, Gollum-style trash talking!
So fill out a bracket and vote when the voting starts. Although I couldn’t make this happen in my own bracket, I would love to see Ruthie Knox’s About Last Night meet up with Julie James’s About That Night. Wouldn’t that be an excellent opportunity for chaos?
Hmmm, I loved The Governess Affair. A Lady Awakened was refreshingly good. Problem is Milan’s story is a novella against your full-length novel. I’m divided.
A Gentleman Undone is my pick against Long’s book. Now, if only I can figure out how to vote. : /
Good luck!
No, The Governess Affair is actually on the other side of the bracket, in the Novella region. The Duchess War is the one I’m up against.
Does it help you decide if I tell you I picked TDW in my own bracket? If I recall correctly, I have it going all the way to the Final Four.
Oh, and if “if I can only figure out how to vote” means you’re having trouble with the form, you click on the title you pick and it magically appears in the next-round slot! But first you have to sign up, if your name isn’t already in that dropdown list.
Thanks for your support of Gentleman. We’ll try to not let you down :)
It did help and sorry for this late response. By the way, I have the arc of A Woman Entangled! I also have it pre-ordered so I can add the paperback to my collection. Well, I sound like a brown-nose.
I hope your week improves! :o)
@Anna: A Lady Awakened is actually matched against Milan’s full length novel, The Duchess War, not against the novella.
Although The Governess Affiar is also in the running, it is facing Turning Up the Heat by Laura Florand in round one, not Cecilia’s books.
Thank you, Janine! For some reason, I keep mixing up the two. :( Maybe it’s the book covers. heh
I am confident the Blackshears will prevail! Both books are just wonderful, and firmly on my very small keeper shelf.
I loved JAL’s Notorious Countess, but the typos in the ebook were HORRENDOUS. So much so that it was hard to finish. I hope they fix them.
Funny, in my review, I referenced A Lady Awakened! They seemed similar in setting.
I’ve got the hard copy of Notorious Countess, and so far have not found any typos that I can recall. I remember there was a mix-up where she changed the heroine’s title somewhere in copyedits or galleys, and the change didn’t get fixed consistently throughout the manuscript – but I haven’t noticed any instances of that yet, so maybe a corrected print edition went out?
It would be a heck of a lot easier to trash-talk this book, as well as The Duchess War, if I hadn’t read them! These are some frustratingly good books.
Yeah, the name change was the big flag (a fellow reader actually counted 31 references to one name, 45 to the other), but there were lots of other editing problems with the e-book (again I don’t know about the print version). We’re talking basic typos, major grammar issues – and references to conversations and things that had happened that didn’t wind up ever happening, probably because they were cut from the manuscript.
Anyway, I did love both books, and it seems that many agree as the poll is neck and neck – I don’t want to beat a dead horse or anything. I just know that if I was an author, I would have been fit to be tied, and as a reader, I would love an updated copy!!
Ouch! Having been through a few editing processes now, I can totally see how those kinds of things can happen. I’m sure Long was probably aghast, but you don’t want to throw any of your editing team under the bus. Everyone does their best and sometimes things just slip through the cracks in the process.
I was at work (no private internet usage allowed) today and missed the voting, but it looks like Gentleman squeaked through. Only to meet up with that darn Duchess War in the next round! Oh, well. It’s such an honor to be included, and I’m so pleased when anyone tells me they voted for one of my books :)
This was truly a difficult one… talk about split loyalties! I’m sorry we won’t see your two against each other though, because that would be hilarious.
Probably just as well. It was a draining week for me in a lot of ways, and I just didn’t have the energy to properly trash-talk myself. I’m not sure I’m cut out for all the DABWAHA campaigning, though I’m greatly entertained by the people (Ruthie Knox, for example) who do have that skill.
Also, my bracket has completely imploded. My paranormal picks were all shots in the dark, and not very good ones, it turns out.
Sorry about your draining week but thanks for the laugh. :-)
Thanks. It was just one of those “perfect storm” weeks that comes along every once in awhile. The post on the Atlantic site, and the resultant Klieg-light sense of exposure, was the big thing – somehow I’d forgotten, when agreeing to do the interview with Jessica, just how taxing that feeling of exposure/conspicuousness is to me – but there were a lot of minor events too, from being wakened at 2:20 AM by the discovery that one of the pets had peed on the bed, to some new hijinks by our aging car that have landed it once again in the shop.
First-world problems to the extreme! But they did tax me to the point where I didn’t have as much energy for the DABWAHA thing as I might have liked.