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Things are advancing in the Alpha Showdown 2013. We’ve hit the second tier of the event. Winners will start battling winners. Expect the stakes to be raised and the smack talk to increase.
These alphas dominated their earlier competitors without lifting a finger. The Beast Lord Curran trounced Holden and son of Satan Reyes had no trouble conquering the vampire Trehan. How will these formidable men deal with an equal opponent?
Read the pitches, then make the call. Who should advance to the next round in the Alpha Showdown? The poll at the end of this post will be open for two days. Remember, alphas don’t share titles. Your votes decide who advances in the Alpha Showdown 2013.
New for 2013! Every (non-spam) comment on an Alpha Showdown post will enter you to win books featuring the final four alphas. So make sure to join the discussion and cheer on your favorite alphas.
CurranYou know him from: The Kate Daniels series by Ilona Andrews
First appeared in: Magic Bites (VBC review)
Supernatural status: Beast Lord (shifter)
Championed by: Christen from Goldilox and the Three Weres | @Goldilox3Weres
Reyes who? Curran is THE BEAST LORD for heaven’s sake! The king of the shapeshifters! The leader of the Pack! A giant freaking lion! Kitty kitty! Oh wait…forget that last one.
Reyes…..king alpha? Better than all the rest? I don’t think so. He’s not even in corporeal form half the time! Curran would bite off Reyes’ head and spit it out faster than Reyes could pull out that cute little scythe of his. Reyes as the winner of the Alpha Showdown? That’s sweet guys, but quit humoring the poor little hell spawn.
Curran is THE alphaiest Alpha out there. He drips authority (and sexiness…and charm…) all over the place. He commands the respect and adoration of the entire Pack and even though he rules with an iron fist, he still manages to be fair, logical, and compassionate. He is a force to be reckoned with, from the roar to the claws to the battle-tested fighting ability – Curran’s the Lord for a reason.
He’s also an Alpha when it comes to romance. I mean, how can you not vote for the man who brought Kate Daniels to her knees? The man who looked in the face of her snarky ‘kitty kitty’ and demanded she cook him dinner in the buff! Who else can make you dream about killing a dinosaur together and then having sex in the dirt? Who else can you lovingly describe as a psychopathic control freak? Who else demands you call him, “Lord” with all seriousness? Who else will glue your ass to your chair and you will still love him? There. Is. No. Other.
Reyes Schmeyes. Son of Satan? Sure, you’re a little powerful, but THE ALPHA? I think not, Hell Boy. So, we’re in agreement then? Just go ahead and vote for Curran so he can take his rightful place as alpha of this showdown. If you don’t, he will know. And since he is kind of a major badass…you might be in trouble. RAWR.
Reyes FarrowYou know him from: The Charley Davidson Series by Darynda Jones
First appearance is: First Grave on the Right (VBC review)
Supernatural Status: The Son of Satan
Championed by: Jo from Vampire Book Club | @Jo_VBC
I see a lot of vampires, some weres and even a dragon in this year’s Alpha Showdown… but only one son of Satan. That’s right, VBC readers, make way for the one, the only Reyes Farrows.
Born from the heat of supernova, he grew to be the General of Hell, leading thousands of soldiers in countless wars… and he gave it all up for a girl. That’s right, Rey’aziel (he’s name literally means the Beautiful One!) said a big FU to his dad and became Hell’s public enemy No. 1 to spend a mortal lifetime with Charley. He didn’t just turn his back on Hell though, he decided to stand directly in the path of what his father wants most, fighting on the front line to keep Heaven and Earth safe.
Inhumanly fast, bordering on indestructible and with an immeasurable IQ, he can take just about anything on. He can fight in his corporeal and incorporeal forms AT THE SAME TIME (yep, he can be in two places at once). When corporeal he’ll use that lethal body to take you out, but when incorporeal he’ll severe your spine without so much as a mark. He’s literally badass enough to scare the dead.
But it isn’t just all about the fighting, oh no. He can be compassionate and kind, he loves with his whole heart and would die in a heartbeat for those he holds close. He’s always willing to make himself look like the bad guy (or in some cases to actually be the bad guy) in order to protect someone else. His Alpha energy may intimidate people on an instinctual level, but for those who truly know him, he inspires unwavering loyalty.
Oh and he does all this looking like tattooed sex on legs, rendering most women speechless when he walks in a room.
Ultimate Alpha = Reyes Farrows. ‘Nough said.
This poll will be open for 48 hours. Alpha with the most votes will advance.
Lol, sorry I mistyped that last #, I meant to type 329 votes for Curran
Also does anyone know when the round closes?
Polls close at midnight CST.
I’ve never read the Jones books, and Curran is one of my 3 all time favorite a$$kicking alphas!
Curran!
Yeah curran kicks ass!!!! <3
It’s a hard choice to make but….may the best character win!
Curran
It’s the one and only Curran!
Curran all the way!
curran
COME ON, REYES!!! I love Curran too, but I would love to see Reyes win this. He is so very much an alpha!
I have read both series and I would definitely vote for Curran.
same here! i agree that Reyes is a sexy bad ass, but compare both series, i get more Curran’s present, his personalities, him as a character is definitely better defined than Reyes, i think! 🙁
Is it terrible to admit that I’ve paid more attention to this than the presidential election?
Ha ha ha !!! The same here !!!!
I love me some Rey’Aziel!!!! Go Team Reyes!
Reyes!!!
Team Reyes!
Congrats Reyes!
YES!!! Now it’s time to beat Adam!
Yay for Reyes!!!! That was intense!
How did Reyes jump 550 votes in an hour? In the last hour? Hmmmm. COnvenient.
Simple. They spammed the polls.
Darn straight we did!! GO GRIMLETS GO!!!
Reyes is one hot alpha….
Reyes!
totally devastated.. i can’t vote anymore, and I can’t believe Reyes overtook Curran. Seriously, it’s not like I don’t like Reyes, but Curran is definitely a better alpha! 🙁
Curran!!!!
Curran rules!!!
What a gyp. Not going to bother voting any more, what good is my measley one vote when it’s obviously bombarded with people voting multiple times
I agree. Their voting has steadily increased in numbers and speed, as it gets later and later in the polls. I won’t vote again and VBC can kiss my views goodbye. Curran was thrashing Reyes until VERY late when most ppl we’re sleeping not when numbers should explode. There was no Twitter or Facebook post that late to bring in all those new votes and how weird is in that compared to Curran Reyes has like zero comments? They were too busy spamming the polls.
Boo hoo. Darynda has an amazing group of fans and we got the word out via Facebook AND twitter. Her loyal Grimlets span continents so to say the votes came in when most were sleeping is poor sportmanship. I personally work at Starbucks and am up at 3am and did I vote multiple times, heck yes! Because Darynda and Reyes deserve every bit of fan support we can give.
Oh boy! It’s got to be Curran for me! Sorry, I love kitties! ANND he’s very hot and come on he is an Alpa!!
I wanted Curran to win. So sad.
I can’t believe it !!!
Majority of Curran’s fans have read the Charley Davidson serie and voted for Curran anyway.
So Reyes’fans, go read the Kate Daniels’books and learn to know Curran the Beast Lord. Meet that awesome heroe and understand our disappointment (and your mistake lol)…
From now, noway you let your Reyes lose the next rounds under 10000 votes.
( sorry for my broken english)
AAAAAAAAAAA! What kind of unjust world is this? CURRAN WAS SUPPOSED TO WIN! 🙁
Wow. When I went to sleep Curran was up 1200 votes. I have to agree spamming took place. Makes me sad. I think Curran is the better of the two. The son of Satan wins.
I hope Curran voters go and spam for Adam.
I know for a fact that both sides have cheated. It makes me sad, because I do not think the alphas would agree to our behavior. Shame on us! But I am pro- Curran and it makes me a little happy, that his fans did not cheat until the end and thus have maintained a little bit of honesty.
Let the son of Satan win by cheating, it is fitting I think. Makes me think less of him as an alpha.
Curran fans! Let’s counter-vote Reyes on every other poll! (Yes, this is the revenge fangirl speaking ;-))
Curran!!’
Curran please!!!
Did Curran seriously lose? NNNOOOooooo 🙁
Curran all the way.
How? Curran is absolutely the best alpha!
Curran!!!
I agree, Curran was robbed! I call shenanigans! Plus, the site was unavailable off and on last night…this just isn’t right.
I’M sorry Curran fans. No one cheated. Darynda has a very devoted street team of which I am a member. We stayed online late last night rallying the members and the fans from her page to place their vote. As you can see, we won by a narrow Margin. Most of us, including me are also fans of Kate Daniels as well. We just voted for our favorites. None of us ladies would even know HOW to spam or rig a vote. Did we vote from computer AND phone? You betcha! Something that you guys also commented that you were doing. Curran was a wonderful adversary and you guys are awesome fans. please do not think negatively of us, Darynda Jones, or this site. Vampire Book Club is a wonderful page that hosts really cool things to make us fan girls and book nerds excited. Illona and Andrew are the nicest people. The Grimlets love them as well. Maybe in the later rounds we can join forces. Barrons anyone?lol
LOL! No spamming? A tad naive?
You did NOT rally more than 700 votes in the very last hour of voting – especially as it was late night US time. That’s ridiculous. No one is buying it.
Reyes was more than 200 behind and an hour later he wins by more than 500 ahead. I repeat: No one is buying it.
What the what?? Curran the mother effing Beast Lord lost to dazed and confused Reyes??? I mean, yeah Reyes is hot and all but the guy’s hardly in the damn books (unless you count Charley’s weird ass dreams) and when he actually does show up, half of what he says/does is obnoxiously deceiving.
Cheating is so NOT Alpha!!!
If there was cheating, which I’m not entirely convinced of, it was done by both parties. Sometimes there were 5 Curran votes for every 1 Reyes vote. I went to bed and Reyes was down by 200 votes. I woke up early and he was down 800. You think there were 600 people voting overnight? Maybe, maybe not. But if there was spamming it was coming from both sides. Pot meet kettle. That’s just like getting mad cause your cheater was beat by their cheater.
Why can’t people just accept that Darynda Jones has incredible fans that not only voted for Reyes but rallied others to vote as well? She has over 12,500 likes on her facebook page. If each person voted once, that was enough for a Reyes win.
She has an amazing fanbase and more than 700 of them just magically voted in the last hour before the poll closed bringing Reyes from about 230 behind to over 500 ahead? In one hour? Between 11PM and 12AM CST? Yeah, right.
Like I mentioned above, if it was done, it was done by both parties. Curran went up 600 overnight in just a few hours. You think 600 people did that? Yeah, right.
And Curran wasn’t up by 250 at the end, they were neck and neck. Even looking at the comments some people were saying it was tied. And Reyes pulled ahead a couple hours before it closed. Curran had a couple votes there at the end and came close to Reyes but it wasn’t enough to beat him. Like I said above, it’s like getting mad cause your cheater got beat by their cheater.
I think Ilona Andrews said it best in their facebook page today: “It sucks that we didn’t win, but there is no reason to be sore losers about it. Let it go.”
Ilona also said (in response to someone who called her fans jackasses right on her fb page):
“It’s easy to see why people were upset. Some voted only once and others were able to vote many times. However, none of our fans are jackasses. We respect our readers and applaud them for their efforts.”
If people need to resort to cheating for their “alpha” to win, so be it, but nobody should get mad when people call them cheaters. That’s the official title for people who cheat – period. You’re not a sore loser when you know the opposing team only won due to cheating.
The poll should require a Captcha to avoid cheating in the future. I saw a moderator say that she “monitoring” the situation from the back end, but that’s not even possible. That was just assuaging the people who were pointing out the blatant cheating. Bad form, IMO. If you’re going to host a poll, you should take measures to prevent cheating or at least be honest about it when it’s CLEARLY happening before everyone’s very eyes.
Just a quick response regarding what we monitor: Poll settings (we can only do what our third-party allows), IP addresses, comments and unique visits via a different third-party analytics provider. All of these line up with a LOT of people visiting the site multiple times on Sunday and Monday for the poll.
The bottom line for VBC on the Alpha Showdown: It’s about fun. It’s a chance for readers to talk about their favorite characters and discover new ones. We’ve done this for three years now and our regular readership really loves it.
@Mary – Yes, she defended her readers and I think that’s awesome. Makes me want to read her books even more now. Curran side were voting more than once too. It was happening from both sides. I saw comments on there of people saying they voted several times and even one person explained how it can be done.
As she said, it’s an online poll. It’s supposed to be for fun. Calling the other side cheaters because they won and bashing the site that’s hosting the challenge is bad form. Like Kat says below “it makes YOU look bad”.
@Chelsea / Vampire Book Club – thank you for doing the challenge. It was fun watching how they were battling it out for 48 hours, but especially the last couple of hours where it kept changing who was winning. And thank you for giving me another series to read. I will be reading Ilona Andrews next. 🙂
Am I pissed Curran lost, yep, love him! But really people! It’s an online poll. Big deal. Get over it. Blaming & bashing the other team or the host site doesn’t make them look bad it makes YOU look bad. What would Curran say? Support Ilona & Gordon, post something positive! Put your energy into something creative! Come up with a good Curran/Alpha Showdown T & I’ll buy one.
Wow. I admit to being hugely disappointed when I saw this result. I actually didn’t get to vote because the last 3days was crazy for me and I got here too late. Next year I am so setting some kind of alarms for this.
I was shocked with the numbers too but cheating didn’t occur to me until I saw these comments.
But the thing that most shocked me is learning that we can vote via phone too! I’ve never ever thought of that even last year! Thanks for the heads up guys. ^-^
This is very fishy. We ( a group of friends) read UF/Paranormal books and we are all going, who is this reyes person and how is he beating Curran…
Some reacted badly to the defeat of Curran, ok, how many, 4? 5? On thousands!! Most of us ( the Curran’s fans) are disappointed, but noway we didn’t insult anyone…
And we are jackasses? really, ok, thanks…
This is a game between paranormal and fantasy fiction’s fans. We share the love of books, for Heaven’s sake.
And please, leave Ilona and Gordon out of this, thank you !!!
They both don’t have to endure the bad mood of some people.
And nevertheless, VBC, thank you for this rendez-vous each year!! This year, I’ve done a new discovery : Dragos Cuelebre!! I’ve just begun to read it and I like it!! So thanks!!
So!! I will continue to read Darinda Jones, because she’s a great writer, her books are very funny!!
Annnnd I’m so eager to read the next Kate Daniels’ book!!!
Like we say in France, OH LA LA !!!!! I’m so eager to read again the adventures of Curran, Kate, Jim, Andrea, Mahon, Derek and all of those amazing characters!!!
Thank you, wonderfull authors, for your Curran .. He didn’t win this round but he won my heart for eternity!!!
( sorry for my broken english^^)
Ditto…what she said! And, thanks to Chelsea and this site, for a fun way to be introduced to new stories and new characters. I personally love the character of Curran, and I am intrigued enough by Reyes to check him out in Darinda Jones’ books. Yeayyy, a new author! There is no reason to get upset over this outcome; as mentioned previously, Ilona Andrews is not unhappy, so why should we take umbrage? Just sayin’….;-)
Caroljay
Shit!! I was away and could not vote. How come Curran lost????
Reyes!!!!
Well, if it was supposed to be fun, it wasn’t. Curran lost and unjustly so, never even heard of Reyes. Votes for him in the next round proved how many spammers voted in the Curran round. They voted over and over until they were always just a few votes ahead. Ilona already said that Curran wont be competing next year because these polls are unfair. Most people voted once but others voted hundreds of times. At the end of the day that is just not cool. People have gladly admitted that they spammed for Darynda ( see above comments by RDBB). All I’m saying is acting like this poll is fair when it clearly isn’t is very hypocritical VBC!
Ilona’s probably embarrassed at how some of her fans have reacted. She had to do a blog/facebook post telling people to stop being sore losers and to let it go because of exactly what you just did. Unfortunately, it’s the few that ruin the fun for the rest of us.
I voted multiple times for Curran. I don’t consider myself a cheater. If you look in her facebook page and blog you’ll see comments of other people admitting it as well. It’s an online poll and it doesn’t say you could only vote once.
We got the bribe anyways. And I found myself another alpha to read. It was fun for all of us that understand this for what it is, nothing serious. Curran will continue being my ultimate Alpha no matter what polls say. So just get over it already.
So admittedly you did something that most people couldn’t do, but that’s not cheating? I am saying and all I ever said was that people have admitted to it ( like you just did) and the polls were unfair. I can’t see what’s so fun about that. Just because you are fine with unfair methods doesn’t mean I have to be,”get over it” is easy to say when you are the one spoiling the fun.
Cheating would be if they specified it couldn’t be done and people did it anyways. If it was against the fules. But it is allowed in this poll. You don’t like the rules of the game, don’t play it. No one is forcing you to.
You’re accusing the Reyes team of cheating. Isn’t it hypocrital of blaming another team for stuff your team is also doing. You specified someone in their team and I showed you examples of people in Curran’s team that did it too, including myself. It was happening in both teams and it ALLOWED in this poll to vote more than once.
There are many things others can do that I can’t and I don’t feel cheated because I can’t do them. I put my big girl panties on and either learn how to or move on. Just because you aren’t tech savy enough to do it, don’t be mad at the ones who can. With how awfully competitive you’re being, I’m sure if you knew how, you would’ve been right there voting multiple times until the poll ended.
The ones that spoil the fun aren’t the ones voting and keeping things interesting to the final second. It’s people like you that complain and complain until the authors themselves have to tell you to stop, that spoil everything for everyone involved. And even then you continue. You think the authors like hearing their fans acting like sore losers? You think they like admonishing them like spoiled kids?
It’s just an online poll that means nothing. Curran is still my ultimate Alpha, this poll won’t change my mind on that. If the authors can get over it and it’s their creation, their character, I’m sure you can get over it.