And the winner is...

For the last month I've been running a poll to find out people's favourite female werewolf. The response has been great. There's been some controversy along the way, and I like to think we've all learned a little something, but it's finally time for me to wrap things up and announce the winner.

But, before I do, here's a little summary of the response I got (like all good awards ceremonies, I know I have to keep my audience waiting).

Apart from the winner(s), the votes were pretty evenly distributed. Honorable mentions go to Nina (from Being Human), Vivien (from Annette Curtis Klause's Blood and Chocolate), Jolie Garoul (from Gill McKnight's Garoul series) and Brigitte Fitzgerald (from the Ginger Snaps trilogy), who blew her sister Ginger out of the water.

Of all the writers whose work was nominated, Martin Millar definitely came out top, getting three characters in the list: Dominil, Kalix and Thrix (from Lonely Werewolf Girl and Curse of the Wolf Girl) placed equally in the final tally.

The she-wolf whose nomination caused the most controversy was Stephenie Meyer's Leah Clearwater. Not only did Leah not get many votes, I actually had two requests to remove her from the list in the first place. I think this says more about the readership of my blog and Twitter account than anything else. Leah is obviously a popular she-wolf, and I would hazard a guess (though I haven't got time to get the stats for this) there is more fanfiction written about her than any of the other nominees. I wonder how much different the voting would have been if any Twilight fans had found my poll?

One other piece of controversy was a vote for Bryn from Jennifer Lynn Barnes' Raised by Wolves. Some people felt that this vote didn't count, as Bryn is not 'technically' a werewolf, she is rather 'raised by wolves'. After some deliberation, I decided to let the vote for Bryn stand. Those of you who read my review of Raised by Wolves might remember that I ended it by suggesting that 'Snarling in anger and revelling in the unrestrained physical freedom of "running with the Pack", Bryn seems to be part-werewolf, despite the impossibility of this. This all raises an interesting question: is it nature or nurture that makes a werewolf?' For that reason, and since we didn't start this poll with a particular definition of 'werewolf', I'm going to let Bryn stay.

And so... with no further ado... to our winner...

Most Popular Female Werewolf

With a huge share of the votes, one werewolf undoubtedly proved herself the alpha female of the pack. She's feisty, sexy and ironically named. She's faced the midnight hour, gone to Washington and raised Hell. From the pen of best-selling author, Carrie Vaughn, she is, of course:

Kitty Norville


Take a bow, Kitty.


But wait... that's not all from the poll... we have another category (that I've just invented)...

As some of you may have noticed, another female werewolf attracted a large number of votes. L.L. Raand (aka Radclyffe)'s Sylvan Mir got a lot of write-in nominations. Some of you suggested that this was a case of spamming or ballot-stuffing, but I can assure you (since I can see the traffic sources for the blog) it wasn't. It was a write-in campaign by Raand's growing band of enthusiastic fans.

I'm going to cite precedent here (and I'd like to thank my good friend, Mike Whalley, for giving me this info). In 1991, the votes for the BBC Sports Person of the Year award were hugely skewed when The Angling Times encouraged all its readers to vote for award-winning angler Bob Nudd. Nudd got a dazzling 100,000 votes from Angling Times readers, despite the fact that the majority of BBC viewers hadn't actually heard of him. The BBC decided to discount these votes, and give the award to athlete Liz McColgan. I have to admit, Kitty Norville is the Liz McColgan of this race.

However, while the BBC decided to ignore the mobilization of Nudd's fans, I'm not going to do that with Raand's. Instead, I am going to name Sylvan Mir

Best New She-Wolf


She might not have the following Kitty has, but she's definitely one to watch. In December, I will be welcoming L.L. Raand (aka Radclyffe) as a guest blogger, and I'll also be posting reviews of the Midnight Hunters books.

So congratulations to Kitty and Sylvan, and to the other fantastic she-wolves that were nominated. And thank you to everyone who voted.