Well folks, the votes are in on the twitter conetest.

And the Winner is… Pat Rothfuss.

Or rather, the winner is @Pat_Rothfuss

Which is to say that the winner was *not* Pat Rothfuss.

By which I mean that the winner was not me. And it wasn’t even a close thing.

With a crushing 42% of the electorate, the winner is.

Mary Robinette Kowal is the author of Shades of Milk and Honey, Glamour in Glass, and Without a Summer. In 2008 she received the Campbell Award for Best New Writer, and in 2011, her short story “For Want of a Nail” won the Hugo Award for Short Story. Her work has been nominated for the Hugo, Nebula and Locus awards. Her stories appear in Asimov’s, Clarkesworld, and several Year’s Best anthologies. She is also a cast member of the Hugo-award winning podcast Writing Excuses. Mary, a professional puppeteer, performs as a voice actor, recording fiction for authors such as Elizabeth Bear, Cory Doctorow and John Scalzi. She lives in Chicago with her husband Rob and over a dozen manual typewriters.

Everyone played a good game, but simply said, Mary crushed this contest. Not only did she get nearly three times the votes anyone else did, but she managed to convince twitter itself that she was me.

It was a little disheartening, in all honesty.

Who were the rest of the players?

@NotPatRothfuss was Amber Benson, with 11.63% of the vote

Amber Benson is a writer, director, actor, and maker of things. She wrote the five-book CALLIOPE REAPER-JONES urban fantasy series and the middle grade book, AMONG THE GHOSTS. She co-directed the Slamdance feature, DRONES and (co-wrote) and directed the BBC animated series, THE GHOSTS OF ALBION. She also spent three years as Tara Maclay on the television series BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER. She doesn’t own a television.

@FakePatRothfuss was Kiala Kazebee, with 7.69% of the vote

Kiala Kazebee is a writer on the internet and co-host of Felicia Day’s web show/book club “Vaginal Fantasy” on Geek and Sundry. She apologizes in advance for making you google that.

You can find her on Twitter. Forever.

@RealPatRothfuss was Veronica Belmont, with 8.97% of the vote

In the world of SFF, Veronica is the co-host of the science fiction and fantasy book club, podcast and video show The Sword and Laser. She is also a member of the monthly Google Hangout show, Vaginal Fantasy, where she drinks too much and waxes intellectual on paranormal romance and erotic scifi and fantasy.

Otherwise, you can find her weekly on the tech-help and how-to show Tekzilla , or as the technology contributor to PopSugar Girls’ Guide show, The Sync Up

@PatRothfuss was my assistant, Amanda, with 14.05% of the vote

Amanda and I have known each other for years now, and she’s been reading the blog for even longer. Not only is she my personal assistant (aka Pat-herder) but she’s also developed a creepy knack for impersonating my phraseology. She’s good enough at mimicing me that shes’ managed to fool Sarah once or twice, so it’s not really surprising that she also tricked 14 percent of you….

She tells me she’s considering getting her own Twitter account now, though she worries she’ll feel significantly less cool than while she was pretending to be me.

@PatrickRothfuss was me, with a mere 15.33% of the votes

I am the actual bonafide Pat Rothfuss. Or at least I thought I was until I lost my own fucking contest.

* * *

First and foremost, big kudos to Mary Robinette Kowal, who was above-and-beyond cunning and devious. Her charity, Con Or Bust, will receive $1,000 from DAW Books, and bragging rights for all of eternity.

She already did a bit of strutting, walking around parts of World Fantasy con looking like this:



I expect I will never live this down…

Secondly, I’d like to thank all of you for a lovely game. Even with a few hiccups, I’m very pleased. Once again, you’ve proven that my readers are some of the brightest, wittiest, snarkiest folks a writer could hope to have.

And thank you to Mary, Amber, Kiala, Veronica and Amanda for spending a couple weeks being me. I can’t stress enough how much I appreciate y’all taking time to goof about with me. You should really check out their work if you haven’t already. Because while they’re quite good at being me, they’re much better at being themselves.

In the next couple weeks, I’m hoping we might be able to schedule a Google hangout together and talk about the contest. But that will probably have to wait until I’m back in the US….

Tonight, (Monday night) I’m going to be doing my reading and signing in Oxford. I hope to see some of you there….

Fondly,

pat

p.s. I wrote goodly portion of this blog using stolen wifi on a moving train. If you ignore my minor typos up here, I’ll ignore yours in the comments below. Sound fair?