A birthday compfest and a lie revealed

Today I am turning 24, and since it's my birthday I want to share the giving love.

I'm smooshing together a competition and a blogfest (so it will be a compfest?) and I wanted it to be one where not only the winners get something out of it, everybody does.

As I have already discovered, when you need some help with your creative endeavours the writing bloggerverse is more than happy to pitch in.

So here's the deal:

• You can choose to enter either the blogfest or the competition or both.
• If you would like to do the blogging part of the compfest, put your name and whether you are posting as a writer or reader in the form below. Write your post to go up on the 11th of March:
• If you are a writer your post will be about something you need help with on your writing. This could be an excerpt from you story, your first page, your query, information on setting, ANYTHING that you think the writing bloggerverse can assist with. Make it clear what the question is, and if you are wanting a piece critiqued please keep it to max 500 words.
• If you are a reader (or a writer who would prefer not to ask for help on their blog), in the spirit of spreading the birthday love, post about one of your favourite books and why you loved it.
• If you would like to enter the competition part of the compfest:
• Follow this blog.
• On the weekend of 11-13th of March visit the blogs of the people participating, and comment/offer your help/critique on a minimum of three of them. Each additional comment/offer of help/critique gets you an extra entry into the competition.
• Get one extra entry for tweeting about the compfest.
• Get one extra entry for blogging about the compfest.
• A post will go up here on the 11th of March titled "Entries into to the Share the Birthday Love Compfest". Use that post to tell me what you've done to get entries with links to blog posts & comments. Please try to comment only once so I don't get confused (I'm easily confused).
• To keep things simple, and to accomodate people on the other side of the world, the 13th of March will end at 12am EST.

Prizes

(Wooo did you say prizes?)

The winner of the Share the Birthday Love Compfest will be drawn at random from the entries into the competition, and will receive their choice of one of these awesome books:

And the first ten pages of their WIP critiqued by me (if they're a writer and if they want the critique).

Three runners up will receive the first five pages of their WIP critiqued by me, or an interview and profile of their blog here.

I hope you'll join me in sharing the birthday love!

And the lie revealed... I don't laugh like a donkey crossed with a duck. At least I don't think I do. But my boyfriend tells me I do have a nervous giggle which occasionally slips out when I've finished talking.