My Blog Award Post

There are so many wonderful and kind and generous people blogging and offering congratulations that I seem to have been overwhelmed with blog awards in the last, what is it, two, three months that I've been writing these posts.  I have been avoiding dealing with them, since I didn't feel like I had enough time to give them the effort they deserve.  But I think they've reached critical mass.  And as I'm supposed to be grading homeworks, any excuse is a good excuse, so here are the awards.

(2 of these)



Thanks to the super cool and interesting Donelle Lacy for
The Kreativ Blogger Award
The Rules:
1. link back to the one who gave you this award
2. share 10 random facts about yourself
3. pass the award on to 6 other people


And The Liebster Blog Award (for blogs that deserve more attention, which is super sweet.)
The Rules:
1. Post this award on your blog.
2. Thank and link to the person who gave it to you.
3. Pass it on to five bloggers who have less than 200 followers.
4. Comment on those five people's blogs to share the good news.


And thanks to the infinitely friendly and charming Susan Francino and Tyler-Rose Counts from The Feather and the Rose for The One Lovely Blog Award.
(Which, OMG, needs to be passed on to 15 people.)
And for The Liebster Blog Award too!
(This one had an extra rule.)
5. Share 5 things about yourself.


Basically, I am feeling the love.  It's really super, though undeserved.


So, sharing things about myself... uh...


1. I had a couple questions about my current WIP, so I'll give a hint or two.  It's about Princesses, and a good 3/4 of the princesses in the story are based off of some of the awesome people on my old Rugby team.  :D  (Totally kick-ass princesses.)


2. I can be a huge wimp when it comes to books (or movies, or anything actually).  Sometimes I'll be reading and I'll start to get that panicked feeling that something awful is going to happen.  My heart will start pounding, and I'll be blazing through the pages, not even breathing.  And then I'll peek at the end, just flip to the last page and scan for the character's name, just making sure they're not dead or anything.  (I peeked at one this morning.  No guarantee that the character wasn't dead, but she was talking at least, so I might be able to hang in there.)  The first time I ever did this was in 4th grade with Bridge to Terabithia.  It... didn't work out all that well, as you can imagine.  I don't think I've ever quite recovered from that.


3.  It's more important to me that people enjoy reading my writing than that they thought it was 'artistic' or 'literary.'  I love writing action, and 90% of the fanfiction I wrote was romantic, but I don't think I could ever write series mysteries or thrillers or romance novels, because, though I want to entertain, I don't have anything to say in those genres.  If I'm going to be talking for 100,000 words, I had better have something to say.  (I think I said everything I have to say about romance in my fic.  That well has run dry.)


4. I moved 7 times while growing up and spent my formative years in graduate student housing.  After studying linguistics I realized that this meant I have no identifiable accent and rampantly promiscuous grammaticality judgements.  I also hate moving.


5. I don't consider myself a raging anglophile, but my favorite thing to do while I'm cooking or cleaning or painting is listen to Dramas or the News Quiz on BBC Radio4Extra.


6. My Crit Groups is full of amazing funny people, and after ripping each other's work to shreds we go out for coffee, and talk talk talk.  I especially like hanging with the two Mystery writers, but they read all the new gritty mysteries and thrillers, and I've really only read the old ones, Dorothy Sayers, Agatha Christie, Arthur Conan Doyle.  But I'm the resident expert on the Cat Who mysteries (RIP Lilian Jackson Braun), because neither of them will touch a cozy with a cat on the cover with a ten-foot pole.


7. Right now, I should be grading or doing propositional logic.  I'd rather be writing, but I don't have the mental space to get anything done.


8. Once someone commented on one of my stories, telling me that I had to be male because I wrote so much fighting and such odd romance.  Although it involves a couple of (unfortunate) stereotypes, I was always really proud of this, because the commenter was wrong, and it meant that I was doing things differently.  Doing things differently has always been a mark of pride with me.


9. Although my main WIP is about Princesses, I can't stop starting stories.  I'm working on a crazy Sci-Fi, a Blacksmith and Dragon tale, a gothic-fantasy YA, and just came up with an idea for a Time Travel MG.  If only I had any time to work on them!


10. Grading sux.


Instead of passing on these awards to, uh, 21 different people, which, though admirable, would kill me,  I'm going to combine the awards into one new award!

Rules:
1. As Dragons and Tea are my favorite things, award this award to your favorite bloggers!
2. Choose a reasonable amount.  Around 5.
3. If you receive this award, share 5 things about yourself.
4. Link back to the giver of the award.
5. No tagbacks! (Since it's new, I can violate this rule!)


Here are my 5. Note that I suck at reading blogs, so this is a bit of a flail.


Donelle Lacy from a Little Dversion - tagback!
The Feather and the Rose - tagback!
Suze Reese - running an awesome Blog Carnival - go join in!
Crystal - neat posts, go check them out!
Patricia C. Wrede - Her blog is my favorite.  She's got great advice, and it really helped me right when I was settling down to really write seriously for publication.  Read all the back posts!  Seriously!