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! 😉

2019 K. M. Shea Heroine Post

The day has finally come, it’s the battle of warriors, princesses, butt-kickers, and spies. It’s time for the 2019 Favorite K. M. Shea Heroine Poll!

For those of you Champions who are new to our community, every year I hold polls to crown the top voted Heroes and Heroines of my books. Earlier this year we held the Hero Poll–you can see the results HERE–and now that I’ve finished the first edit for Reign of Magic, it’s time to hold the heroine poll!

The rules are the same ones we follow for the annual hero poll. You get to cast your ballot once, but you can vote for up to five heroines! The poll order changes with every refresh, so look carefully to make sure you haven’t missed any of your favorites. The poll opens today, and will close September 21st.

Who will win this year? YOU DECIDE! Vote now, and may the best heroines win!

Note: For the first hour of the poll we had a hiccup where the poll wasn’t letting everyone submit multiple heroines, it’s all fixed now but we had to delete that data so if you voted early, you can now re-cast your ballot for the full 5 heroine selection!

Take Our Poll

2019 Most Wanted Hero Poll Results

The 2019 Most Wanted Hero (Arch Type) poll wrapped up several weeks ago, so it’s time to talk about the results. I thought I didn’t really have any expectations about how it would go, but somehow I still ended up surprised!

First of all, yes you could vote for a few different choices, but overall there were a lot more votes cast that last year: in 2018 there were 2,400 votes placed and in 2019 there were almost 5,400 votes! So to anyone who participated this year for the first time, welcome!

Another way I was surprised was by how close most of the categories were. In 2018 the Villain Turned Good guy choice won by a landslide.

Take a look at how the Top 10 ranked this time:

1. Dangerous, but with a great heart – 396

2. Sherlock or Macgyver type genius – 378

3. Rival to the Heroine – 351

4. Villain Turned Good Guy – 308

5. Quiet / Strong / Gentle Giant / Introvert – 262

6. Genuinely Kind / Steady Good Guy – 257

7. Indiana Jones / Rick O’Connel from the Mummy – 235

8. Reluctant Hero – 225

9. Guy who hides his real self behind humor/jokes – 212

10. Best Friend / Guy Next Door – 207

The top 2 categories were so close to each other! And so many of the others were so close to each other too!

I host this poll every year because it’s really fun to talk about all the different kinds of heroes out there, and hear from you regarding the kind of heroes you like. But the poll also helps me decide what types of book projects to work on.

For example, in 2018 when Villain Turned Good Guy won by a wide margin it helped me decide to move forward with the idea I already had for a sequel to Red Rope of Fate featuring a new couple where the hero was a villain in the first book. (It’s called Royal Magic if you haven’t tried it yet.) I wasn’t sure how the redeemed villain, Prince Benjimir, would be received, so if that arch type hadn’t won the poll I probably would have put off the idea even longer. So a big thanks to everyone who voted for that last year and welcomed the book, Royal Magic, with open arms!

At this time I don’t have any heroes planned that would match the “dangerous, but with a great heart” arch type, but it’s something I’ll keep in mind for future series. I also take into account the results of the poll when I am planning some side characters, including the huge cast of my Second Age of Retha series. So don’t worry if your idea didn’t get a lot of votes, you still might see a character like that in one of my future books!

However, I am happy to announce that book 3 in the Elves of Lessa series, which is coming later in 2019, will feature a hero who is a book worm and a bit of a Sherlock/Macgyver type. For those of you who have read the series, the hero will be Crown Prince Arvel, who ironically is the brother of the “villain turned good guy” from book 2. 🙂 I just got the cover art back from the illustrator so I’m super pumped to work on it, but I need to stay focused on Angelique for now!

One final note, a few of my other heroes who are close matches to the Top 10 Arch Types list above insisted I point out to you that they already exist. (Though I think it would be fun to give these arch types another go, but the heroes are LOUD and insist on being heard, lol.)

Here they are:

1. Sherlock or Macgyver type genius – Merlin (King Arthur and Her Knights)

2. Villain Turned Good Guy – Farrin (Snow Queen), Benjimir (Royal Magic)

3. Quiet / Strong / Gentle Giant / Introvert – Fritz (Snow White), Arion (Red Rope of Fate), Isaia (Sleeping Beauty), Solus Miles (Second Age of Retha)

4. Genuinely Kind / Steady Good Guy – Alexsei (Swan Lake), Callan (Little Selkie)

5. Guy who hides his real self behind humor/jokes – Devin (The Magical Beings’ Rehabilitation Center)

As you can see, even if I use the same arch type, the characters can still look drastically different. (Farrin and Benjimir are perfect examples of this. Farrin is 90% honor, where as Benjimir is about 90% scheming.)

Thanks for reading, Champions, and a special extra thank you for voting!