Watch out Facebook groups, there's a new alpha/beta reader matchmaker in town! Well, that is, if you've written a novel, novella, short story, poem, etc. (either complete or a work-in-progress) and would like to swap reads with a few other like-minded writers/readers. The site itself, CritiqueConnect.com, lets you set up a profile, talk about what projects you would like others to read and how you can be contacted, etc. The key part however is the ability to filter the list of readers and/or writers based on whether they're paid critiques or volunteers. Most of them will eventually come with testimonials and one-word-based ratings of course.

Got a few comments from the Writers' Groups on Facebook about the first 500+ words of the Prologue and made several amendments to the first page of the Prologue. There have been several inputs on change in points-of-view, repetitive adjectives and descriptions, and names of characters. I suppose when the genesis of the novel stemmed from the fact that it was written as a screenplay originally, where the scriptwriter has to 'describe' what is happening from a visual point-of-view, it is hard to move away from a visual style of writing. Not only that, you need to also get into the details a little bit more (defining character features, flaws, tics) and smells (we always lose that in a screenplay, but not in a novel).

I've just gotten accepted into several fantasy writers' groups on Facebook today. Most of these groups will accept you if you read their house rules, obey them and answer a few questions related to being a fantasy writer or at least a fan of fantasy writing. The great thing about being in a closed-group writers' community is that you can ask questions related to your work, writing, characters and get honest feedback as just about everyone else in the group are writers. The key part about posting a snippet of your writing is to keep it short and succinct, so that the group can read it without having their eyes glazed over (yelp! walls of text!). Here are links to the three that I've joined.

• Fantasy Writers Support Group
• Fantasy Writers forever!
• Fantasy Writers