Now Entering Smartsville

Have you checked your e-mail? Winners were notified (about 30 seconds ago). If you did not get an e-mail, I’m SORRY!

I couldn’t believe how many people entered. And how many people got them all right! (More on that in a minute.) Last time when I did a simple ‘pick a number’ giveaway I had lots of entries, but this time…it was crazy! I felt like I was back grading papers (which was weird)…and there were a few, Oh, hey, s/he’s got a point! situations. (More on that in a minute, too.)

There wasn't a "B" in the bunch--"A" and "A-" grades across the board.

Which meant I had to draw names of those who got them all right from a hat.

First, I want to say THANK YOU to everyone who took the time to do the crazy Elvis challenge, and I’m SORRY to the vast majority of you who got all the answers right but won't be receiving an ARC.

Next I want to say how totally COOL I think you guys are. And smart. And nice. This has got to be the nicest group of people on the internet. Everyone’s always supportive of each other in the comments, people thank me and compliment me and never snipe. Sniping is rampant on the internet. It’s a coward’s playground. But there’s never even a hint of mean spiritedness here. I really appreciate this “secret community” and the personalities that pop in and out and make me laugh and go, Awesome! Like the five factorial note– thinking that the little parenthetical exclamation point in the Contest Time text was more than humorous styling; that it was a mathematical equation—that “5!” meant 5x4x3x2x1 … which it does (but not here) and would have meant 120 ARCs to give away! This factorial thought only flashed through her mind before she realized that couldn’t be the case, and she apologized for being dopey. But see, that’s not dopey! The fact that it even crossed her mind was awesome!

Anyway, I love you guys, and I respect you, too. And I was sweating out the entries because, yes, there were some one word titles that I hadn’t even considered—specifically, “Almost”, “Something”, and “Don’t”. Only one of those (“Almost”) was a legitimate hit because it was the only one that appeared in Elvis’s dialog. There was some confusion with the rules and let me assure you that if you indicated titles that were NOT in Elvis’s dialog you were NOT marked off. But what I was looking for were the words that Elvis speaks that were Elvis song titles. And the title “Almost” near the end of the excerpt IS present in his dialog, but I had not counted it. So ch-ching! Up to 45. (Which suddenly seems very appropriate—wasn’t that the RPM of Elvis singles?)

(See, who but you guys would go, Yeah! That’s right!)

(You are saying Yeah! That’s Right…aren’t you?)

Also, there was the question of double-ups. A legitimate question, but no, I didn’t break the titles into titles and “subset” titles (going with the factorial / mathematical theme). For instance, I didn’t count [When] “My Blue Moon Turns to Gold Again” and its subset “Blue Moon” as two song titles (but there’s no way I would count you off for pointing them both out, especially in your nifty multi-color coding). Same with “Honky Tonk Angel” and its subset “Angel”.

Finally, I just want to mention that it was very interesting to see how far and wide ya’ll are scattered. Lots of you in Canada! But my favorite city was “Smartsville”.

Smartsville!

I think that represents this group perfectly.