Blog Awards

Pay It Forward

Well, thanks to follower, friend and critique buddy Janet Johnson, I have a blogging award to pass on.

According to Janet, the idea is “to share three under-the-radar blogs that I love and then visit the blogs everyone else mentions,” that is, the blogs of your visitors.

Well, I am definitely under-the-radar and nichey. LOL There’s no way around that. I’m not sure you can call Catwood’s blog “under-the-radar,” but she’s rebuilding her site. If you’ve ever done that, you’ll know you lose a whole bunch of followers, so I thought I’d post her link.

Hot Curries & Cold Beer is an excellent food blog by Rashda Khan, also known as Mina Khan, author of the Djinn’s Dilemma that I mentioned in my last post. She’s got more than one blog, but I do enjoy the food one and it’s deliciously a little under-the-radar. Yum. 🙂

Jeannie Lin’s blog is far from under-the-radar, but it is still related to my topic and therefore nichey. Head over there today. She’s got a great post on one of the differences between Western and Asian lit.

Blogging Awards

I have put this off for far too long and subsequently lost track of a few awards given to me. My sincere apologies to the friends who gave them! If you remind me here or privately with a good strong (and sadly virtual) dope slap, I’ll be delighted to post your name and blog address in the appropriate spot. I hope I have not damaged relationships by not reciprocating before now.

I do, however, want to rectify at least some of the situation now!

Many thanks to Laurel Garver and Susan B. Kason for the One Lovely Blog Award. And I just discovered Susan Cook also just gifted me with this one. That did NOT influence my choice of giving her the award below. LOL I’d already decided to do that before I visited her.

I’d like to share that award with Vicky English’s Camelot blog (it’s about FAR more than Arthurian history and myth). She has excellent breakdowns on character and plot development.

And Cara Lopez Lee at Girls Trek Too. It’s a site for writers, travelers and everyone in between.

Many thanks to Rachna Chhabria at Rachna’s Scriptorium for both the Versatile and Grasshopper Awards. Rachna has probably realized by now that I’m disorganized and not the best at this sort of thing, but she nonetheless persists in being both a good friend and follower, and also an amazing blogger. If you haven’t checked out her scriptorium, it’s a must.

I’d like to share the Versatile Award with Janet Sumner Johnson at Musings of a Children’s Writer because her blog is both funny, touching and informative. She’s probably already receive and responded to the award which just goes to show she’s far more deserving of it than I.

The Grasshopper Award I’d like to share with Aron White at Mumbo Jumbo
and Susan Cook at The Pen and the Spirit. They’ve both got fresh, wonderful blogs and you should check them out.

The Sweet Blog Award was given by yet another thoughtful person whose name I didn’t remember to write down until it was too late. (Can we tell I AM kicking myself for this? I am. Really. Really. Hard.)

I’d like to share it with:

Susan Dennard who is so generous with her time and thoughts. (She has frequent posts where she’ll review queries and her comments are spot-on.)

And one last award given by someone forced to be anonymous. My poor friends really suffer for their friendship with me, I’m afraid. This is the Beautiful Blogger Award – one I obviously didn’t deserve, but will gratefully pass on to someone more worthy, like

Margo Berendsen at Writing at High Altitude is a constant commenter here who never fails to give me a sense of peace and awe. She is certainly a beautiful blogger.

Now, I am going to cheat a bit. You’re supposed to list seven things about yourself, but I’d be awake all night trying to do that for each of these awards, so I’ll just do it one time. (You can all breathe a sigh of relief.)

1. I’ve always had a “thing” for China – ever since I first read Marjorie Flack’s “The Story About Ping.” See the power a child’s writer has?
2. I first traveled to China at the tail-end of the SARS outbreak and never once worried about contracting the illness.
3. I’d traveled to England twice before going to China (I’m also an Anglophile and ADORE Wales and Welsh history – thank you, Susan Cooper) and without a doubt put myself in danger of Foot and Mouth AND Madcow Disease.
4. Which is why I am no longer eligible to give blood. Yes, I cheated and divided that one into two facts, but it really does peeve me that I can no longer donate. I was there in 1991 for one month too long.
5. I would LOVE to someday travel to Turkey. Yes, I have plot ideas in mind. Sigh. So many places and ideas. So little time.
6. I love to travel (duh) and yet I can still get motion sickness with a simple drop in altitude or a too-swervy road.
7. Testified to by the fact that I lost my cookies entering Japan’s airspace. In my defense, we flew through a typhoon. And yes, I cheated a bit on that one, too.

Sorry about all the cheats! The fact is, I’m writing this the night before I’ll post it and my five-year-old is stretching out her bedtime while I type. I need to go run her down. LOL