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With his keen eye for story detail and a well-rounded grasp of the craft of writing, Tommy ensures our work stays consistent, professional, and grounded. He recognizes every place we try to sneak in a clumsy POV shift, a run-on sentence, or an ill-fated split infinitive. You can tell your story is working when that unmistakable smile of his emerges.
His darling wife says he has an obsessive streak, compounded by a hard lean toward brutal honesty. To us, he’s sweet (and occasionally funny), which is exactly why we keep handing him our pages—willingly. His feedback, often laced with just the right amount of candor, always makes our stories sharper and smarter.
As an author, Tommy is the consummate storyteller. Reading his work is like sitting by a campfire, warm and entranced—until you realize you’re glancing over your shoulder for Ed Gein or the chupacabra. On voice: Swearing? Never! Contractions? Only when necessary! But visceral, spine-crawling descriptions of monsters and gore? Tommy’s got you.
Robena Barton
Robena is the Voice of the Reader. Her critiques come from a masterful place of experience, sharpened by her studies in Russian history, her training in library science, and her natural instinct for narrative. She reads with both precision and empathy, offering every piece a balanced review. With clarity and care, she highlights plot holes, challenges character inconsistencies, and helps us breathe greater depth and robustness into our stories. She is the conscience of the group, the open and honest voice that tells us what rings true—and what “is just creepy.”
Is it fact or fiction? That’s the question Robena’s writing compels you to ask. Her prose is so vivid, so grounded in feeling and finely observed detail, that she blurs the boundaries between real events and fairytale logic. She turns truth into something magical—and myth into something that feels real—and you never know what to expect next.
Sylvia is everyone’s favorite auntie—soft-spoken, unbelievably kind, and brimming with incredible stories. Occasionally, those stories are dark and twisted…and the rest of us, personally, would not want to be on her bad side.
Her holistic approach to critiquing and encouragement keeps us going, gently nudging us to fix those awkward plot turns and unexplained details we missed. A true woman of the world, Sylvia draws on years of rich experience—from travel and service to others to her love of yippy little dogs—to offer helpful ideas and steady moral support as we shape our work.
Her autobiographical creative nonfiction narratives take you away, immersing you in unfamiliar, faraway places with words that feel like hot black tea with milk, cardamom, and sugar—bittersweet. Stories of love, loss, and adventure are Sylvia’s main dish.
Chris is the empath—the group’s measurer of emotion. If your writing makes them cry, it’s ready for publication. If you’ve crafted a likeable character, you’ll know it from their enthusiasm. The best fan you could hope for, Chris also inspires with thorough, thoughtful insight. Wrote two thousand words? If you want, Chris will give you two thousand words of feedback in return. Our often-feeble attempts at storytelling are immeasurably better because of their reviews.
On writing: If words could slay dragons, Chris would bring about their extinction. They have talent galore—and inspire with passionate, prolific output, and tireless dedication to the craft. Buy Chris’s dragon-filled novel soon on Amazon!
Roy is a connoisseur of vintage rock that was never cool, food too spicy for this planet, and philosophy too unwieldy for polite conversation.
Ever ready to read and critique, Roy brings a keen eye to the technical elements of the craft of writing (and the craft of beers). If you need help with your work, he has the experience—and a constantly growing body of output—to help make it that much better. If you need advice, he’s sure to offer a debatably perfect metaphor to get you thinking. Or to confuse you.
As the cattle prod for a group of disjointed artists and malcontents that would surely fall to pieces without him, he is also an excellent writer. In extended, classic, complex sentences that are sometimes stories in their own right, Roy serves up heaping helpings of healthy philosophy, concealed like broccoli between delicacies of spaceships, time travel, falling in love, and the downfall of society.
Adam Scott
Take a comma, leave a comma—Adam is the Yoda of writing, the grand master of grammar, the walking Strunk and White, the scientist of setting and scene. Rest assured: Adam has read every page, every paragraph, every sentence, every word of your work—thrice.
He can dissect a sentence with the precision of a brain surgeon and make it bloom with the touch of an artist. His reviews are invaluable, and his submissions keep us all coming back in hopes of more.
A genius without ego, a heart without limits, and a wordsmith extraordinaire, Adam writes flash fiction that leaves you stunned, laughing, slightly bemused, and mildly confused. You can always expect connections and patterns that are borderline sorcery.