The Versatile Blogger!

Since I don’t want utter torture to my writerdom for eleven years, here we go. I remember doing something like this a few months back for another award, so I’m going to make sure the new seven random facts about me are not the same ones. Let’s see if I can do this in under 500 words this time, last time was way over that.

The Rules:

1. Thank and link to the person who nominates you.

2. Share seven random facts about yourself.

3. Pass this award to five new blogging friends.

4. Contact and congratulate the awarded bloggers.

I would like to thank M.R.Merrick who is not only a fun guy to follow on Twitter and Facebook, but is also the author of one of my favorite books Exiled which I featured in my book recommendations.

My 7 Random facts:

1) I am a sugar addict. I love candy that is just pure sugar. I’m talking candy corn, skittles, nerds, gummy bears, jelly beans, sweet tarts, shock tarts, spree, etc. Not so much things with chocolate, but I will eat tons of chocolate too. Believe it or not I don’t get a lot of cavities. (Thank you dental floss and Listerine).

2) I wrote out nearly a 10,000 word story segment to send into Wizards of the Coast (Dungeons & Dragons) so that I could hope for a contract and write novels for them. I was almost complete when I realized that I didn’t know much about all the new D&D content and had little interest in relearning it since I hadn't played since high school, so I altered the location of the story and it’s now one of my summaries for a future novel in my fantasy series. For a while I thought I was making a mistake then realized this goes back to my not liking someone else controlling my creative freedom. I’m not a fan of deadlines either. I get plenty of those at the day job.

3) Speaking of work. I have an extremely dull job that is perfectly suited for a writer. I can dream up ideas all day while I query data from a database and sort it before e-mailing it out to various sources that request it. No human interaction unless I allow it and I have a window with a tree just outside. Since people are never actually standing there waiting on me, it helps to keep the stress down and I never have to struggle to meet my deadlines.

4) I am a fantasy football fanatic. It’s an addiction and I am very competitive. You might notice on several social sites like Twitter, I will become a little scarce with my random thoughts on Sunday afternoons. My writing suffers too, because I’ll spend hours reading updates on injury reports and players who had great games, looking for the next hot pick up to get to that championship. Sad, I know. Don’t judge me.

5) Speaking of hurting my writing, my wife and I treat my writing time as a part time second job where I separate myself from my family and focus on getting things done. I won’t prioritize my writing outside of these scheduled hours otherwise I’ll spend all my free time writing, and neglecting my family would make me a bad father and husband. Writing is my part time job, and someday I hope I can make it my full time job.

6) I grew up in a rough neighborhood, I got in a lot of fights and I studied various forms of fighting to gain the edge I needed as a scrawny pale skinned nerdy kid with glasses. I apparently have an obsessive personality because I began studying everything I could on warrior cultures and learning how to overcome fear to face those who threatened me in the schoolyard. Some fought for fun, I fought because I felt I had to survive the ghetto. After a while, bullies began to avoid me.

7) By the time I was in high school, I was no longer fighting and I could talk most people out of a fight with me or my friends. Brains over brawn always works when you would point out how fighting would only cause more problems for everyone and in the end it never solved any problems anyway. I felt much tougher when I could calm them and let them see reason before resorting to fists. My writing usually results in fists though. Sometimes that's more exciting.

Well that was 7? I wasn’t sure I’d come up with seven ones different from the last award that made me do this.

Speaking of which, I am supposed to list five blogger friends now. Thing is, I’m sure they’ve all received this in the past, but hey, they deserve it. They’re great to read. I’m lenient too, and I won’t pressure anyone to continue this chain letter, but I still want to say thanks for the great blogs!

Kendall Grey

Allie Burke

Lindsay Buroker

Angeline Kace

Jessica McKendry

If I left you off the list, please don’t be offended, there are dozens of blogs I read as often as I can and dozens that would deserve this award, these are the top 5 most recently active blogs on my list of favorites.

I failed miserably to keep this short, but thanks for hanging in there. And keep blogging!