The Infinity Dreams Award

I’ve been very remiss in responding to award nominations recently – sorry! It’s not that I am indifferent to the honour. I am always humbly grateful that anyone out there enjoys the blog sufficiently to consider nominating it… So many, many thanks to the wonderful Sara Letourneau for nominating me for this beautiful award. Sara is a fellow speculative fiction author, beta-reader par excellence, avid reader, great blogger and huge tea-drinking fan. If you are remotely interested in the craft of writing, then check out her blog – she is generous with her advice and tips.

The rules for this award are:-
1. Thank and follow the blog that nominated you.
2. Tell us eleven facts about you.
3. Answer the questions that were set for you.
4. Nominate eleven bloggers and set questions for them.

Fact 1 – I love my garden, though it is sadly neglected. I am passionate about gardening organically to encourage wildlife. The exception to that of course is slugs and snails, though I still refuse to use slug pellets to exterminate them.
Fact 2 – I enjoy listening to music while I am writing and when completing Miranda’s Tempest this year, I compiled a specific playlist to help me write the more emotional passages.
Fact 3 – I loathe being cold. If I had the choice, I’d far rather cope with bone-melting heat than being chilly, which makes me miserable, bad tempered and unable to think.
Fact 4 – I took four goes to pass my driving test, which I finally managed aged 34. My difficulties were caused by my problems with left and right, so whenever I was directed by the driving instructor, I hesitated too long at junctions. Or turned the wrong way… I only passed because my instructor suggested I lipstick the letter L on my left hand.
Fact 5 – I also learnt to swim in my thirties. One day while queuing at the checkouts with my son in the pushchair, a delightful elderly lady in my swimming group cheerfully hailed me from a neighbouring queue with, ‘Hallo there! I thought it was you – I nearly didn’t recognise you with your clothes on, though.’
Every head swivelled in our direction as silence roared around Gateway’s checkout area…
Fact 6 – I’m very fond of spiders and insects and grow lots of plants to encourage them. Earlier this year, a large bumble bee flew into a spiders’ web in my garden shed and she crawled across my hand for nearly an hour while I teased the silk from her wings and body until she was able to fly away.
Fact 7 – I LOVE people-watching and eavesdropping on conversations. Favourite overheard line – one builder to another, describing the receptionist at a high-end solicitors’ office he was working on… ‘She was a stunner – legs up to her armpits. The sort you’d elbow your old lady in the face to get a crack at if you reckoned you stood half a chance…’
Fact 8 – I was a skinny, worried young woman and now I’m more laid back and a whole lot wider… On balance, while I’d like to be slimmer and fitter (I have writers’ backside) Life is easier now I’m more chilled.
Fact 9 – I used to sing in a choir, but I simply don’t have time anymore, which doesn’t prevent me warbling in the shower or on the rare occasion I do housework.
Fact 10 – I hoard TV programmes and films to watch on the hard drive and often simply delete them without getting around to seeing them. My favourite TV show these days is ‘The Big Bang Theory’ and ‘Horizon’.
Fact 11 – I am a writing addict. If I go for more than a few days without writing something fictional and fanciful, the world becomes a grimmer place. My husband maintains it’s me who gets grim, but I find that hard to believe…

Answers to the 11 Questions
1) Does your personality fit your zodiac sign? How? (Or, do you believe in the accuracy of zodiac signs?) I can’t say that it makes any sense for those signs to be accurate – but the fact is that I have many typical characteristics of someone born under the sign of Cancer.
2) What is the most chilling or frightening story you’ve ever read? Annoyingly, it is in the days before I kept proper reading logs and it was a science fiction near future story of a world where the machines decided to rid Earth of humanity and finally achieved it by poisoning the money. I just can’t recall the name of the author, or the book…
3) What is your favourite fruit? Mango – yumm…
4) What is your favourite room in your home? The lounge where I do nearly all my writing. So it’s where I have the most fun…
5) How do you de-stress after a long day? Read or play solitaire on the computer – at present. I tend to zero in on one game until I get tired of it, then flit onto something else.
6) What was the name of your first pet? What kind of animal was it? Rufus and he was a golden Labrador.
7) What was the last funny thing that made you cry because you laughed so hard? I cannot recall the exact exchange, but this last week I went out with my writing group pals and we were laughing hard enough to make me smudge my eye make-up.
8) How do you like to pass the time during a car/train/plane ride? In the car, I am most often with my husband if it’s a long trip, so we chat or listen to an audio book or music together. On a plane or train, I read.
9) Have you ever kept a journal or diary? No. For which I’m very thankful…
10) Do you speak other languages besides your native tongue? Which ones? Very rudimentary Spanish and French.
11) In your opinion, what is one thing (tangible or intangible) that our world could use more of right now? A distribution system worth the name so those with too much could ensure those with not enough had sufficient for their needs.

My nominees for the Infinity Award
No one is obliged to take on this award – or you can postpone it until Life is not falling on your head. But know that you were recommended because I enjoy your blog.
1. Dream Big, Dream Often
2. Bette A. Stevens, Maine author
3. Jean Reinhardt
4. Ana’s Lair
5. Rosie Oliver
6. The Earthian Hivemind
7. A Daily Rhythm
8. Roam Wild and Free
9. Never Less Than Everything
10. Sophie E. Tallis
11. Chris the Story Reading Ape

My questions for my nominees (should they wish to answer them)
1. What is your earliest memory?

2. What is the worst present you ever received and why?

3. What is your dream car and why?

4. What is your favourite type of cake?

5. What was the first film you remember seeing at the cinema? Did you enjoy it?

6. What is your favourite font for reading and/or writing?

7. If you had a chance, what would you tell your 10-year-old self?

8. What is your favourite type of weather?

9. What is the oldest thing you own?

10. When was the last time you wore a hat?

11. If you had a chance to attend your dream dance, what would be the song you’d dance to and who would you want to dance with?