Stylish Blogger Award #2

When a person sends a kindness your way, it’s only right that you show your gratitude.  So please don’t see this just as an opportunity for me to toot my own horn (which it is, of course), but also as a way to say, “Thank you” to a fellow blogger who chose to honor me with my second Stylish Blogger Award.

Rosi Hollenbeck over at The Write Stuff wrote the following about my blog.

Now Margaret is organized! She writes daily and once each week she writes about social media and blogging. When I begged her for help finding a way to put an email subscription gadget on my blog, she sent me to her Nov. 17, 2010 blog and there it was. It didn’t even take me five minutes. She also has some of her short stories and excerpts from her novel available for your reading pleasure.

Thank you Rosi for the honor.  You made my day.  Blogging can be a lonely business, and you just made it sooo worth it.

The Stylish Blogger Award

Now accepting this award doesn’t come without a few minor strings attached.  In return, I must:

1. Thank the person who gave me the award.
2. Share seven things about myself.
3. Pass the award on to a blogger/bloggers I have discovered who is/are fantastic.

As for number one, I already covered that, but here it goes again. Thank you Rosi, thank you, thank you.

And number two, well, I already shared seven things about myself when I received my first Stylish Blogger Award, but I’ll pass it along one more time.

1. I write Upmarket/women’s fiction with paranormal elements, more specifically, visionary fiction.
2. In 2010, I completed my Creative Writing Certificate at UCDavis Extension.
3. In the past ten years, I have completed four novels, which I continue to revise and revise and revise.
4. In 2010, my novel, Between Now and Forever, made it to the quarter finalists in the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award Contest and it won a Publisher’s Weekly Review.
5. To my complete amazement, one of my poems, Messy Slick Roads, was published in Summer 2010 edition of The Tule Review, published by Sacramento Poetry Center.
6. In October of 2010, I sent out a query, synopsis, and sample chapters for Between Now and Forever to an agent and am waiting for a response.
7. On July 8, 2010, I officially started my blog and have posted at least three times a week since then.

And now for sharing the award with two fellow bloggers I feel are deserving.

First, there’s Aris Llamera Moreno and his The Optimist’s Blog.  In his own words: I am a  passionate blogger who finds blogging a useful way of expressing my thoughts and feelings. My goal is to provide you inspirational stories and articles that can help you achieve your greatest potential.

Aris invited me to share on his blog, which, of course, I was happy to do.  He also helped me when I ran into technical difficulties with my own blog’s inner workings.  He is indeed a very special person, and although he lives in Bacoor, Cavile, Philippines, our blog connection makes it seem as if he lives next door.

Then there’s Felicia Ragsdale and her blog, Scrapping is My Life.  This is not a writer’s blog, but I appreciate Felicia’s dedication to a hobby just as important to her as writing is to me.

I’m also blown away by her organizational skills.  If only my writing space was as organized as her “scrapping” space.  Check out her blog and be impressed.

Oh, and I can certainly identify with Felicia’s dilemma when she says: I never really realized, or admitted, how much shopping for craft supplies makes me feel good. A week or so ago I promised my hubby that I would not spend one single dime on any scrapbooking item. Now, some of you might be thinking, “No big deal. What’s your problem?” Well, my problem is I LOVE to buy scrapbook things. I want to have everything. Everything that I see that comes out I I want to have everything. Everything that I see that comes out I say, “Oh my gosh. I need that.” It has been a constant struggle every day not to break my promise. I haven’t, but I am struggling.