We Have a Winner!

Everyone, thanks so much for entering the contest for my sister's writing book! (the book I was going to give to her, not the one she wrote, since she hasn't written any :-) It was great to hear from so many people.

Well, I have a winner. Let me explain the determination:

On last Monday's (12/1/08) post, I set up the rule that one comment per blog entry would be eligible for the drawing. I would enter each comment/name into a bowl, and randomly draw someone out.

When I'd tallied all of the names on my sheet of paper and put ticks next to each name for the number of comments, I found that there were a total of 40 comments. The next step was to give each comment a unique number from 1 to 40. You can see the list of names and unique numbers at the bottom of this blog entry.

The list of names goes from most recent blog entry to oldest. I started at the top of each blog entry, so the list of names isn't quite reverse-chronological, and then I counted each comment given by each name sequentially and assigned a number. Yes, if I were doing this experiment absolutely correctly I would have randomized the comments to then assign a number, but this is truly a pain, my dear readers. I figured my procedure was random enough.

Next, when it actually came down to it I didn't want to physically write 40 numbers on scraps of paper and put them in a bowl. Instead I went to a random number generator here and instructed it to pick a number between 1 and 40, inclusive. The generator gave me number 7. This is one of Sarah's numbers, so congratulations Sarah!

But wait, there's more!

I STILL have 9 extra ARCs that will deplete my stock -- but since some people indicated an interest in reading the ARC as much as the Truby writing book, I decided to award a multiple second prize. What the heck, right? Back to the random number generator. The numbers generated were 31, 14, 39, 38, 20, 13, 20, 29, 1. I had to run the generator one more time, since 20 occurred twice. This number was 4.

Therefore, the second-prize winners of these ARCs are:

Lynn (31)
Jessica (14)
Chi (39)
Dmarks (38)
Billy (20)
Inspire (13)
Avily (29)
Joanne (1)
Ruth (4)

OK, I have emails for everyone but Jessica. Jessica, I'll leave a comment on your blog, but get in touch, OK? Everyone else, I'll write you directly -- I need addys to send the books out. I'll be sending by media mail which is cheap, but very slow at this time of year.

To everyone, thanks for participating. The book will be available on amazon by February if not before, so check back!

This contest turned into a bigger deal than I thought :-) But I for one loved it. Thank you, everyone!

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Joanne (2 comments) unique numbers 1, 2

Ruth (3 comments) unique numbers 3, 4, 5

Sarah (6 comments) unique numbers 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11

Inspire (2 comments) unique numbers 12, 13

Jessica (1 comment) unique number 14

Gwen (1 comment) unique number 15

Lydia (3 comments) unique numbers 16, 17, 18

Billy (2 comments) unique numbers 19, 20

Alison (2 comments) unique numbers 21, 22

Philangelus (2 comments) unique numbers 23, 24

Rosslyn (2 comments) unique numbers 25, 26

Avily (4 comments) unique numbers 27, 28, 29, 30

Lynn (3 comments) unique numbers 31, 32, 33

Travis (1 comment) unique number 34

Brenda Susan (2 comments) unique numbers 35, 36

Julie (1 comment) unique number 37

Dmarks (1 comment) unique number 38

Chi (1 comment) unique number 39

Nancy (1 comment) unique number 40