Pay it Forward Blogfest

I’ve been slowly culling my unmanageable Google Reader list, working to keep only those blogs which are truly useful or entertaining, and making some progress. Then one of my regulars, Elle Strauss, posted a note about the Pay It Forward Blogfest organized by Matthew MacNish and Alex Cavanaugh:

“The idea is to introduce everyone to everyone else. We want this to be an easy post that allows you to meet and follow as many other bloggers as you can. In your post, we would like you to please list, describe, and link to three blogs that you enjoy reading, but that you suspect may fly under the radar of a lot of other bloggers. Or they can be famous blogs, as long as they're awesome.”

Usually I avoid these things, blog rolls and you-list-me-I’ll-list-you, but for some reason, the tone of Matt and Alex’s posts caught my attention. Now I have nearly two hundred new blogs to consider – yikes!

Picking three of my favorites (besides the wonders of Elle, noted above, which is already on the list) was not easy, but here they are:
• Natalie Whipple’s Between Fact and Fiction – humor, insight, and a real-life perspective on lots of issues I share
• Justine’s Tribal Writer – anyone who speaks to the “Badass Creative Woman” is worth a second look, and a third
• The Bookshelf Muse by Becca Puglisi and Angela Ackerman offers a fascinating series of tips on incorporating sensory description in writing through a series of thesaurus (thesari?) covering weather, emotion, character traits…priceless!

These last two definitely don’t fly “under the radar,” as suggested, but they’re definitely awesome and worth reading for lots of good reasons:
• TerribleMinds by Chuck Wendig – usually vulgar, often laugh-out-loud hilarious, always insightful
• The Vandal by Derek Haines – an ex-pat Aussie living in Switzerland. Need I say more?

I wouldn’t dare go back to my weekly writers group if I didn’t include the following efforts, all with their own unique quirks:
• Tami Absi - FrankenPig
• Lori Lopez - Lost in the Writing
• James Reynolds - WriterJames

Now to work my way through the Pay It Forward list and discover new gems! Hope you’ll join me -