I wanted to wait until it was official. Now that Dimestore’s Kick Start Newsletter is up, it’s official:

WE WON!

Phil Meadows and I were neck and neck with the “Fly Guy” Team for the last two days of the contest. It had started out as a proper talent contest, where we were trying to get people to check out Metro Med and vote for it because they deemed it the best. When I returned from Iowa I-CONN to find that in the meantime the FlyGuy team had jumped ahead by 100 votes, we realized it had descended into a “get the most clicks” competition.

I e-mailed the entire old Fanzing mailing list of 500 people (about 400 of whom have changed e-mail addresses in the last year, judging by the “not found” bounce-backs), and as a result we moved from 40 votes behind to 50 votes ahead…but not for long! Midday Saturday, as Phil and I were handing out promotional fliers at Jimmy Jams, Melinda told me over the phone that we were tied 410-410!

On the final day, we were both hitting message boards and e-mail lists to get more votes. I was e-mailing, IMing, begging and pleading like a scared little Bavarian girl. Chris Arndt was getting me tons of votes from people he knew. Gordon Purcell saw my post on Dixonverse, remembered he was going to vote for me after I-CONN and became one of the final votes that pushed us over the top.

At 11:59.30, Ian told me via AIM that we were tied 515-515, so he was going to let the vote go for another minute! I replied that I was glad to tie. He shot back, “You sure? Because just as I was disconnecting the database two more votes came in and you won. I wouldn’t have believed it if I wasn’t watching.”

So technically, we won, 518-516. With the voting so frantic in that last half hour, I think it’s fair to say that a minute’s difference either way and we could have lost by two or five or ten…or been ahead by the same amount. We certainly didn’t trounce anybody!

I would like to extend a hearty congratulations to the Fly Guy team of Ryan Sergeant, Edward Webb and Mike Langdale. While we won the top spot in “Mysterious Visions Anthology #1”, they’ll be taking the top spot in issue #2.

More good news is that fellow Fanzing alum and Job Wanted artist Roz Terrill and her writer hubby put in a terrific effort to garner 355 votes and come in third. She had been also beating us by 100 votes until this last week when I began my vote drive…which made me kick myself, since I was the one who gave her the “give it a try” encouragement to enter the contest when she didn’t want to! She’ll be the headliner for MVA #3. Dimestore Productions, in recognition of the top three runner-ups strong performance, will be giving all of them good discount deals on their publication as well.

I want to thank EACH and EVERY one of you, and I mean that. With a 518 to 516 win, it’s safe to say that every vote was crucial, so if you voted for me you deserve a hearty thank you. Phil and I want to thank Chris Arndt, Chaim Mattis Keller, J. Morgan Neal, Josh Elder, Erik Burnham, Scott McCullar and the numerous other people who helped spread the word to their friends but didn’t tell me about it. (Whenever you thank people by name, you overlook some, I know that. Still, this is a start.) I want to thank my far-flung relatives the Bottomleys, Hutchisons, Slones and Almes. I’m very glad that I come from, and married into, stout farming family stock where every branch of the family has four siblings or more; it makes for a very large e-mail network!

And a big thank you to the Fanzing and Monitor Duty readers who came through in a big way this last week. Getting Metro Med off the ground is the culmination of a dream I’ve had for ages, and all those years of work on Fanzing Magazine (and now Monitor Duty) have, in fact, paid off.