Winner of the Naming Contest!

I chose a winner for the naming contest tonight. I made a list of the top five names on Tuesday. Then I spent the rest of this week staring at that green sticky note. All but two names remained today. For hours I agonized over which name to choose - it was totally ridiculous! I even considered hosting a secondary contest and letting my readers decide because I did not think I could do it.

Then I worried that wouldn't be fair. After all, I had promised to choose a name. I hate going back on a promise. After a few more torturous hours, I finally settled on the name Zuri.

Why? Well, obviously I already loved it. Plus, I have a thing for the letter Z. I think it will fit the character perfectly too. The winner is Stephanie Overton. She won an enticing sneak-peek paragraph from Severed, 10 bookmarks, being thanked in the acknowledgments, and an eARC of Severed (which will be delivered in November). She also got an email from my personal account (this is what I get for prepping an email while I'm also getting my kids ready for bed). As most of you know, Megg Jensen is a pen name. It's not like I'm trying to live a super-secret life. I'm readily found on the web as a parenting journalist. It's my intention to keep journalism and publishing my novels totally separate. What if you wanted to look up my books under my real name? Well, a web search could result in an article on baby poop or the death of a pet. If you're curious about my pen name, read more here.

Some of you may have seen Stephanie's name pop up a lot around me. She's a reader and one of the sweetest people I've met on the web. She's pretty damn funny too. If you're wondering what the second name was ... well ... I'm not going to say. I don't want to make anyone feel bad because no one likes to come in second place.

I do want to thank all of you who took the time to enter. I don't know if you realize how much I appreciate your interest. I really, really, really do. Tons. Thank you.