Finally! I announce the winners!

Hi all!

Today is the day for me to announce the winners to the Paying Forward Awards and January's Word Master Challenge.

Before I get to it, though, some admin. I know that my absence this month made things a bit difficult, so I want to use this opportunity to ask for February's prize sponsors to please step forward. The arrangement is the same as before. You can volunteer anything you feel comfortable with volunteering. In return, you'll be linked to on my blog and I can and will help with promoting your blog/book etc. If you're interested, please contact me at mishagericke(AT)gmail(DOT)com to volunteer and if you have any questions. Please put "Paying Forward" as your topic. Thank you in advance!

And now, to the winners. After a long time wondering about how I'd divide the Paying Forward Awards, I thought I'd do it as follows:

I'm going to announce the first and second place winners for each category. They need to contact me ASAP at mishagericke(AT)gmail(DOT)com to claim prizes. Topic line: "I came first/second." The way I will distribute the prizes are as follows: First prizes, First comers. So if by this time next week, the first prize winners didn't claim, I will be giving away the prizes on a first come-first serve basis. The winners are:

Most Encouraging Blogger: 

1) Alex J. Cavanaugh

2) Julie Luek

Best Reviewer: 

1) David Powers King

2) Amy Cockram

Best Writing/Inspirational Blogger: 

1) Annalisa Crawford

2) Elizabeth Spann Craig

Beginner/Small Blogger with Most Potential:

1) Livia Peterson

2) Al Diaz

Congratulations!

Before I go, I want to announce the best of the worst for Word Master Challenge January. For those of you who missed it, I mean that I'm announcing three Word Masters.

Sharing Second place are: Roland and Carter with two really hilariously bad entries.
In First Place (winning a ten chapter crit) by a small margin is August. His entry was insanely bad and funny, but is only for adult readers, so be warned.

Before I go, I want to say that the overall level of the entries were really good. So much so that I couldn't do a top five as planned because fourth place was tied between five people. Thank you very much to all who entered.

If you want to kick yourself for not entering, hold off for a minute. February's topic is announced, so check it out. If you don't enter this time, though, feel free to kick away. ;-)

There you have it, folks! Who's in for WMC Feb? Who's volunteering for the Paying Forward awards? (Don't forget to mail me too. I have to be able to contact you later.) Any suggestions for Paying Forward Award Categories?