Good Things Come in Threes or More

On Wednesday I actually received three awards. This blows my mind. If I wasn’t already bursting with joy at my good fortune and grinning like I won a Literary Award for my book, Thursday I received another. In two days I got four awards. I’m so flattered.

I’m going to do an epic Award post now. I apologize if I tagged you for an award and you already have it. I also tried for no overlap in any of my award giving (including Wednesday's) because ALL of you deserve one. (In my humble opinion anyway.)

Writing Nut at Writing in a Nutshell gave me the Honest Scrap award.

The rules are to write ten things that aren't common knowledge and then pass the award along to five people. 

Ten (hopefully) Unknown Facts

1.When we look at the stars we're looking into the past. In some cases, millions of years into the past.

2. Animals can scream too. Somehow, the sound is far more horrifying to my ears than human screams. 

3.Cats have over one hundred vocal sounds, while dogs only have about ten.

4. The combination "ough" can be pronounced in nine different ways. The following sentence contains them all: 

"A rough-coated, dough-faced, thoughtful ploughman strode through the streets of Scarborough; after falling into a slough, he coughed and hiccoughed."

5. The longest word in the English language, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, is pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis. Meaning from dictionary.reference.com: an obscure term ostensibly referring to a lung disease caused bysilica dust. Pretty sure I couldn't say this word if I tried.

6.There's been a Beer Tsunami. It happened in London 1814 and nine people died.

7.The human heart creates enough pressure when it pumps out to the body to squirt blood 30 feet.

8. Right-handed people live, on average, nine years longer than left-handed people do. Yay me!

9. A cockroach will live nine days without it's head, before it starves to death. 

10.  First novel ever written on a typewriter: Tom Sawyer

My Five People

Roland D. Yeomans at Writing in the Crosshairs

Lydia Kang at The Word is my Oyster

Michelle Hodkin

Amparo at No Rest for the Lazy

Sara B. Larson 

Aubrie at Flutey Words created a new, totally awesome award! It's gorgeous isn't it?

This award is for bloggers who either write or promote fantasy or sci-fi fiction. 

Five Fantasy/Sci-fi Books That Inspire Me

1. Harry Potter by J.K. Rowling. I lack the words to properly convey the meaning this series has to me. Harry Potter made me experiences emotions when as I kid I thought I'd be better off without them. Order of the Phoenix is the only book (to date) that has ever made me full on cry because of content. (And when I say cry I mean until I dehydrated myself.)

2. The Hobbit by Tolkien. While the rest of the Lord of the Ring series is good, the hobbit is my favorite. I read this book when I was super little and the hobbit turned my impressionable mind towards Fantasy. I have yet to look away.

3.  Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll. This book resonates on so many levels of my crazy mind. I relate to it and the nonsense. Half the time I feel my head is full of nonsense.

4. The Mortal Instruments series by Cassandra Clare. My favorite urban fantasy series. There's memorable characters, a beautifully crafted world, and it's extremely witty.

5. The Looking Glass Wars Trilogy by Frank Beddor. It's a different version of Alice in Wonderland and to be honest that would be enough to make it on this list. But it's also well done and imaginative enough that I love it on it's own terms.

Pass the Award Along

Megan Rebekah at Megan Rebekah's the Write Stuff

Karen Amanda Hooper at Eternal Moonshine of a Daydreaming Mind

Erica Mitchell-Spickard at Chapter by Chapter

Callie Forester at Chimera Critiques

Kiersten White at Kiersten Writes

If you write/love fantasy or sci-fi and I didn't tag you...you are now officially tagged.

Okay. Last award! 

Erica Mitchell-Spickard at Chapter by Chapter gave me the Sugar Doll Award and I really, really wish I could give it back to her because she has to be one of  the sweetest bloggers I've met so far. 

There are no rules for this one as far as I can tell. You just need to be deserving of the title.

Ramona at The Art of Ramona

Jessica Nelson at BookingIt

TYWO at The Purple Fairy

Naomie Rees at Inkcrush

Everyone else who read through this entire post automatically gets this award -- you are all kinds of awesome!


Word Of The Day: Afflatus - inspiration; an impelling mental force acting from within

Versatile Blogger Award

Renae over at The Siren’s Song chose me as a recipient to an award. This feels monumental.

Two good friends of mine forced me to get a blog back in 2009 but it’s only recently that I actually started participating in the blogosphere. 

It’s hard to put yourself out there, to share yourself even with the anonymity afforded to us by the internet. Even though we never see the faces of the people reading our work, they still judge us, we’re still being scrutinized. But I’m glad I’m no longer lurking on the shadowy edges of this community.

Everyone is so supportive: people rush to celebrate each other’s successes; they offer warm words when someone’s down; we share our experiences and learn from each other. This support is invaluable and atmosphere’s like these can’t be found in many places.

And today I feel like I’ve reached a rite of passage of some sort. My first award.

This award, like most others, has some rules.

1.Thank and link back to the person who gave you this award.
2. Share 7 things about yourself.
3. Pass the award along to 15 bloggers who you have recently discovered and who you think are fantastic for whatever reason! (In no particular order...)
4. Contact the bloggers you've picked and let them know about the award.

Thank you so much Renae, your support and thoughtfulness really mean a lot to me.

7 things about me:

1. I grew up as the eldest (just my mom, sister and I) but am technically a middle child, with two siblings (girl, boy) on each side with thirteen years between my older sister and I and thirteen years between my younger brother and I. (Kind of strange isn’t it?)

2. Despite my valiant efforts (and trust me there’s been many times I’ve tried) I’ve never had pig freeze.

3. If being a writer doesn’t work out I want to be a Music Supervisor.

4. Every person who’s been in my life and every significant moment I’ve experienced is marked with at least one song.

5. On my eleventh birthday I waited all day for an owl to deliver my acceptance letter to Hogwarts (I know I did a post about this a while back but I couldn’t resist).

6. My dreams will be realized if my series can impact one person the same way the Harry Potter series impacted me.

7. Ninety percent of the time the characters in my head feel more real to me than people I can touch.

To pay it forward:

(as a side note, I’d like to say that several of the ladies Renae passed this award on too I wish I could second the motion because I really do think they deserve it, Caitlin, Lydia, Amparo and Courtney)

1. Justine Dell

2. Natalie Whipple at Between Fact and Fiction

3. Creepy Query Girl

4. Aubrie at Flutey Words

5. Jennie Bailey at Garden Full of Lily

6. Natalie Bahm

7. Mayowa at Pens With Cojones

8. Shannon Whitney Messenger

9. Jen Daiker at Unedited

10. Christina Lee at Write-Brained

11. WritingNut at Writing In a Nutshell

12. Beth Revis at Writing It Out

13. Suzie at ~Writer Junkie ~

14. Lola Sharp at Sharp Pen/Dull Sword

15. Erica Mitchell-Spickard at Chapter by Chapter


UPDATE*


To clarify, Pig freeze is when you eat ice cream, a slushy, or basically anything really cold and get a pain in your head (you can get it in other places too). I would try to describe it better except I've never had the feeling myself. I do know that I'm the only person I've ever met who's never experienced pig freeze. I guess pig freeze is a Canadian term or something....