Spreading the Blog Blove

Awards Blog Time

I'd like to thank Olivia Herrell at That Rebel With A Blog who has been kind enough to give me two awards. I am very flattered to have been given these awards. Either it means she really enjoys my blog, or she thinks I'm a patsy. Either way, I'm happy to receive them and follow the rules (there are always rules).

The first one was The Versatile Blogger award. Yippee. That is me, because you never know what this blog will be about. Neither do I. Sometimes even after I write it I'm not sure. But the rules are as follows:

1. Thank and link back to the person who gave you this award.(whew, that one was easy)
2. Share 7 things about yourself.
3. Pass the award to 8 bloggers* who you have recently discovered and who think you are fantastic for whatever reason! (In no particular order...)
4. Contact the bloggers you've picked and let them know about the award.

Share seven things. Oh wow. Here goes:

1. I wrote "The Secret of the Green Eraser" in grammar school. It was a novella, probably about 8 or 10 pages--but that is a LOT in grammar school. It was a mystery, but I don't think I ever wrote exactly what the mystery was because I didn't know. This was when I discovered it is difficult to write a book.

2. I am not a rule-breaker. However I sometimes change the rules to suit my purposes.

3. Every time I send in a query for my book, I spend at least an hour imagining the agent or the very worthy assistant opening the email, loving the query letter, reading the ten pages (or whatever they wanted sent along with the query, and then begging me to send them a full manuscript. After sending it to them, I imagine them reading it with a very, very strong drink, and deciding they will represent me. Then I imagine them selling the book, the movie rights and foreign rights in a bidding war. My imagination moves on to buying a little cottage in the south of France and hiring a cabana boy to bring me fruity drinks with little umbrellas in it while I tap away under an awning on my next book.

4. It seems to take me a long time to send out the next query letter.

5. It took me about an hour, and a glass of wine, before I finally hit the "send" button for my first query.

6. Agents and their very worthy assistants scare the bejeebers out of me.

7. I don't know why I think of zebras when I see a crate outside of a business.

Before I bestow the award, I need to list the second award, also given by Olivia Herrell.

This is really a lovely award because it involves a teacup, filled with tea (I imagine) with pink flowers floating on top. Thanks Olivia. Here are the rules for this one:

1.Accept the award, post it on your blog together with the name of the person who has granted the award and her/his blog.
2. Pass the award to 8 other blogs* that you've newly discovered.
3. Contact the bloggers to let them know they have been chosen for this award.

So, I'm going to award both awards to the following eight terrific bloggers. Most are new to me, but a couple of them I find so fun, that I've named them for these awards too.

1. Rashelle Workman at A no.2 pencil stat! who had a fun "First Sentence" Blogfest

2. Rebecca Thompson at Sonshine Thoughts who has a fun blog on Wednesdays (well it is fun every day, but I like the Wednesday one) and graciously allowed me to give her a heart attack.

3. Sharon Axline at Preposterous ponderings who is a fabulous writer and has two of the cutest little dogs, ever!

4. SingleDatingMommy at Adventures in Dating who is enormously funny, and writes very well, but doesn't even realize how well she writes.

5. Taffy Lovell at Taffy's Candy who has an awesome first line to her book. Makes me want to read more.

6. Vicki Rocho at Rambles & Randomness who is running an interesting Matchy-Match Contest on her blog. Check it out.

7. Elizabeth Mueller at Elizabeth Mueller Blog who is keeping the faith and being a writer at the same time. Nice blog.

8. VR Barkowski at VR BArkowski Writer's Blog. Besides being a great blog to get information, it just LOOKS nice.

*Okay, I have said the rules are to present the awards to eight bloggers. Originally the rules were to present to fifteen people. I changed it to suit my purposes and really, I'm not sorry about it either (namely the amount of time it takes to do this) and I welcome these recipients to do the same or return to the original fifteen.