“Winning!” (My quote from Charlie Sheen)

So it turns out we have winners in all three of our contests to announce.  In order of prize package, here are the results.

Prize package One:(A random selection from commenters on the blog post)   A copy of The Hidden Life (hard or e-book whichever you prefer) and the same offer I made to my good friend Kelli Rush Bach. You pick the character (up to three, can include yourself if you’d like), the theme (anything at all as long as it’s reasonably family friendly). and the number of parts, up to 10 and I will write a Serial Saturday on your choices. You get to be the hero of your own story!

Winner:  Lorien Megill!  

Because it was completely random, (Here’s the link I used to randomize the names  http://www.random.org/lists) and because half of the commenters on that particular post were related to me, I decided not to disqualify family members.    Thanks to all you who commented and thanks so much for the well wishes.  Congratulations Lorien!   I know you wanted to win the shuffle, because you have already been in many stories I told you and your siblings growing up, but if you will be particularly creative in your selections of genre, characters, and such, I will promise to try to make it unique and special for you.  I know you’ve read the book.  Let me know if you want a hard copy or an e-book certificate for a friend.

Prize package Two: (For the most likes for a quote on the new Pastormac Facebook page)  A copy of The Hidden Life (hard or e-book whichever you prefer) and a brand new iPod Shuffle. You pick the color.

Winner:  Adriana Stansbury!  

Thanks to all of you who participated and invited others to participate.  We reached 96 likes as of this moment and I suspect we will pass 100 soon.  Over 15 hundred people saw the Facebook post between your friends, friends of friends and so on.  That’s a great start and I thank you for your help!  On top of all that I got some really cool quotes!  Adriana won with half again as many likes as the nearest competitor.  Congratulations Adriana!  I liked your quote a lot; wise words for any parent.  Just send me an email, a Facebook message, or use the contact me link above to send me your address and iPod touch color and  whether you want a hard copy book or an e-book and I will send  the book and the iPod  to you ASAP!  Yay!

Prize Package Three: (To the solver of the riddle I posted in the blog) A copy of the Hidden Life (hard or e-book whichever you prefer) and an Amazon Gift card worth 50 dollars.

Winner:  Kevin Megill!  

Here again, given that this was a puzzle to solve and there was no advantage that I could see to being related to me, I decided not to disqualify relatives.  Kevin discovered in ways to be revealed tomorrow, that the answer to the riddle was “Bag it”  The challenge at that point was to created a joke in which that was the punchline.  As he points out actual funny was not a requirement, although this made me chuckle anyway.

Here was the winning email.

Two policemen are at a crime scene.

“I think the murder weapon was this long thin loaf of French bread. Can something like that hold fingerprints?”

“I don’t know. It seems unlikely …”

“Should we have the lab check? And what do you call this kind of loaf anyway?”

“Bag it.” [baguette]  <– the punchline

You *did* say it didn’t have to be funny!

Congratulations Kevin!  I am one of the puzzle creators who is constantly striving for hard enough to be interesting and not have everyone get it right away, but not so hard that no one solves it.  Thanks for solving it!  I think I know your address.  I’ll send you your Amazon gift card via email and a copy of the book to giveaway since I know you already have a copy.  Let me know if you want hard copy or e-book.

Thanks to everyone for playing and celebrating my 100th post.  And now thanks for reading my 101st post!

Tomorrow for our 102nd post, Kevin will be posting about his journey to solve the puzzle.  Post 103 on Saturday will be Katherine part 8, and then post 104 on Sunday will be Pastormac’s pilgrimage when I’ll fill you in on my pastor’s retreat and where I am in my pilgrimage to next.  So a full weekend and by this time next week we’ll be hitting my 105 post already!  Shall we do another giveaway?  How about you compete to give me stuff this time?  Sounds good to me.

Please offer your congratulations to our winners as well as any thoughts on any of the contests (were you close to solving the puzzle for example?) either here on the blog or the Facebook post referencing this blog if you prefer.