Chocolate! And a Cool New Site for Writers

First off, I've discovered an interesting phenomenon. My top three posts (based on hits and comments) have been about the following:

1) Politics
2) Twilight
3) Winning chocolate

Hmm. I should post more often on topics that people feel passionately about!

NOW . . . announcing the winner of the Word Nerd Wednesday contest:

Really truly, I used an online random number generator to pick the winner. I typed in the number of people who left their scores in the comments. The site picked #7. Then I counted down to find the winner.

I swear this isn't a matter of family loyalty, but it's still pretty darn cool that my sister-in-law at Lyon Pride won! (Yay, Tina!)

And for the sake of the sheer creativity of her comment, I'm going to award a second truffle bar to LisAway! (Lisa, e-mail me your address, k? I already have Tina's, so we're good there. :)

Finally, I have to point any aspiring writers to a cool new site where you can get critique feedback from other writers. It's called Review Fuse, and I found out about it through my brother-in-law, who's one of the brains behind the thing. (Check out the about us page. You'll see a Lyon there!)

Here's the idea behind Review Fuse:
You post your work. When you get reviews back, you get to comment on how helpful each one was. You also then review other writers' work and get reviewed on how helpful you've been. The result is that the site learns your skill level and learns to better connect you with people on your level. In addition, you decide whether to keep your work in the public catalog for anyone to view or to keep it private for just your reviewers to look at.

All around, the concept is way cool.

They've recently added the ability to create critique groups, so you and several friends (even ones geographically distant!) can create your own groups and run it on the site, or you can create a group from current site members.

They've even got a blog with advice on writing, where I (and some of my friends) might be guest blogging at some point. Stay tuned.

The site is still in beta. Members are coming on daily, so it's really growing. The best news? It's FREE.

I know there are tons of people out there who love to write but for whatever reason have a hard time finding readers and/or a critique group. This could be your answer. Check it out here.

Final note: During my bloggy break, I kept composing posts in my head as I fell asleep at night. Of course I wouldn't forget what they were about, right? Not after I thought through them so thoroughly. Never.

Yeah. Of course they're all gone now. I have no earthly idea what they were about. But trust me; they were brilliant.