Blogger Recognition Award

In this post I want to finish off with three more blog awards. The first two are different versions of the same award, with similar rules, so I’ll do these two together.

I was nominated for the first award (the orange one) by Antonia. Her blog, Zoale.com. is another food and cookery blog that I love, and Antonia posts recipes which are – in her own words – Greek and American Inspired Fare. Antonia likes to balance healthy eating with occasional more decadent and festive dishes suitable for various celebrations throughout the year. I recommend you to take a look. I’ve simply linked to Antonia’s About page here, as the Award post was last April.

The second Blogger Recognition Award is one I was nominated for a couple of weeks ago by Timi Townsend. Timi’s blog, Let Us Live Like We Mean It, is full of exciting historical posts and write-ups of reenactments that she has taken part in at a variety of venues. Timi is a particular lover of the Viking era and I’m very much looking forward to reading about her coming holiday in Iceland in May.

These are the rules for Zoale’s nomination:

Thank whoever nominated you and provide a link to their blog.
Write a post to show your award. Attach the award to the post.
Give a brief story of how your blog started
Give a piece of advice or two to new bloggers
Select up to 10 other blogs you want to give the award to.

And these are the rules for Timi’s nomination:

Thank the blogger who nominated you and provide a link to their blog.
Write a post to show your award.
Give a brief story of how your blog started.
Give two pieces of advice to new bloggers.
Select 15 other bloggers you want to give this award to.
Comment on each blog and let them know you have nominated them & provide the link to the post you created.

These are my (combined) answers to the two sets of rules:

3. My blog started in August 2014 while I was still writing my second book, and several people suggested to me that all writers should have a blog. Well, despite not knowing anything about blogs and blogging, I set one up (with much help from daughter Louise (thestorytellersabode) who decided to set one up for herself at the same time).

My blog got off to a very slow start, and I didn’t write many posts until January 2015 when I became involved with several flash fiction challenges. I’ve been enjoying myself with all kinds of posts ever since.

4. My advice to new bloggers is to be active on your blog from Day One. Look for bloggers who post about topics that interest you and follow them. Read, like and comment on posts and you’ll soon become part of the blogging community. Entering some of the many challenges (which relate to many different topics, including photography, story writing and poetry) also helps you to connect with others, although they can be time consuming. Most of all enjoy your blog and just post about things that interest you.

One piece of advice I’ve read a time or two is to be sure to include images/photos/pictures in your posts to make it more appealing. A page full of text alone can look quite daunting and people can be out off from reading. There are several places where you can get free images (e.g. Pixabay) or you could use your own photos. If you intend to use a lot of images, as I do on my Travel and History posts, make sure to edit them to keep the file size small. I didn’t realise it mattered until my media file was suddenly almost full. It took me ages to go through all past posts and reduce file size of my pics.

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My seventh and last award is one I was only nominated for the other day. This is the logo:

I was nominated for this award by Jo Hawk on her blog, johawkthewriter , so it’s a big thank you to Jo. Jo is a writer, in the process of completing the first draft of her first novel – a journey she shares on posts about daily writing and what works best for her regarding inspiration and writing habits. Jo also shares short stories and sometimes takes part in challenges. Her creative writing is excellent and witty and I recommend you to take a look at her blog and have a read!

This award was created by okoto enigma, so a thank you to Okoto, for that. I’m guessing that the name of this award (Mystery Blogger Award) relates to the name of its creator.

Here are the rules for this award:

This is a much longer award post than all the others I’ve done in these two posts, and I’m afraid I’ll be answering the questions very briefly. As this is my 7th award over two posts, I won’t be nominating too many bloggers either.

Display the award logo on your blog
List the rules
Thank the blogger who nominated you and provide a link to their blog
Mention the creator of the award and provide a link as well
Tell your readers three things about yourself
Answer five questions from the nominator
Nominate 10-20 bloggers. Notify each by leaving a comment on their blog
Ask your nominees 5 questions of your choice, including one weird or funny one.
Share the link to your best post.

5 Three things about me:

Oh dear – more facts wanted. Let me see…

I have blue eyes and fair hair. Sorry, that’s not exciting at all, but I’m struggling to find things to say that I haven’t said before on previous award posts.
I’m a titch. At 5 foot two (which I’ve probably said a million times before) I need to stand on a chair to reach anything in my kitchen or on top shelves in cupboards anywhere in the house. But the height goes nicely with a great old song, so that’s alright. Here’s a video of the song from YouTube, uploaded by secretgate. This clip is from the 1952 film, Has Anybody Seen My Gal?

3. I don’t have a middle name and nor do many in our family, other than my dad. He was a Thomas Peter. My mum was just Millicent (Millie) and her side of the family didn’t bother with middle names… And I always wanted one, for some reason!

Q. 6 The five questions from Jo for me to answer

1. Who would play you in the movie of your life?

My answer: Because I’m an ‘oldie’, I suppose it would have to be a number of actors for different periods of my life – a child actor for the childhood scenes, for example. Post childhood, the actor chosen would have to be a youngish person (in their twenties or early thirties) who could be ‘made up’ to look older as I aged, or younger to play my late-teenage years (in the ‘Swinging Sixties’!). It would also, perhaps, need to be someone who resembles me, at least a bit – not a six-footer, for a start. So, my answer in a nutshell is: I’ve no idea because I’m not a movie-goer nowadays. Lol

2. What is your inspiration for writing?

My answer: I generally write historical fiction, so obviously actual historical people, sites and events inspire me a great deal. I’ve loved history all my life and am intrigued by all the events that have happened to make the human race and this planet we call Earth what they are today. But I also respond to all kinds of prompts on flash fiction challenges, although wherever possible, I’ll try to do something historical for those as well!

3. Where would you live, if money didn’t matter?

My answer: I would never live anywhere else (permanently, that is) than England. I might complain about the weather, but ‘England’s green and pleasant land’ is what I know and love – and all my family is here. Besides, we have a wealth of historical sites, so what else could I ask for? As to where in England I’d prefer to live, the answer is Southport in Lancashire, where I was born and raised. But we’ve been in ‘Robin Hood land’ (i.e. Nottinghamshire) since the late 1970s now, and I’ve no real complaints. And it rains less on this side of the Pennines (hills known as ‘the backbone of England) than on the wet west where Southport is!

4. When did (or will) you consider yourself successful?

I suppose success means different things to different people. Many of us can have successful lives without becoming rich and/or famous. I consider myself successful in many things, such as gaining my geology degree and teaching certificates, in raising six children and having a great time teaching teenagers geography and history for many years. I’ve also been successful in keeping relatively healthy for so long and in being able to visit many countries of the world – although I still have a long list of places yet to be ticked off.

As far as my writing goes, I’ve loved writing my books and feel successful in having eventually got round to writing novels after so many years of not having the time (too many children and too long in teaching! Lol). I also feel successful in having had so many great reviews of them, but I’m still hundreds of miles away from what people would call a successful writer – usually meaning one who makes a lot of money from their books and has become famous. I don’t want to be famous… a quiet life suits me fine.

5. Why did you start blogging?

I’ve just answered this question for the award post above (Q.3) and on yesterday’s award post (Black Cat Award, Q.1) so I won’t repeat it all again! Perhaps I’ll just repeat that, after a slow and hesitant start, I do love my blog.

Q. 8 As this is the 7th award post, and this particular award is a very long one, I’m going to chicken out from asking my nominees 5 of my own questions here. Instead, I’ll cheat and pass on Jo’s questions (the ones I’ve just answered above). They were interesting ones to do.

My nominees for these three awards.

As I did on the last post, I’m leaving it to nominees to decide which of the three they accept – if they choose to accept any. Apologies in advance if I’ve nominated anyone whose blog is ‘Award Free’.

I am delighted to have received two more blogging awards, although they’re really two versions of the same award (I think). I am grateful to Suganiya on her blog at Infinite Passion for one (left, below) and to Susan at Susan’s Personal Blog for the second (Seal of Approval on the right). Both of these lovely people write interesting flash fiction stories and participate in other challenges, and I recommend you to take a look at their blogs. I apologise to both Suganiya and Susan for sitting on these awards for far too long.

So, here are the rules!

1. Select 15 other blogs you want to give the award to.
2. Write a post to show off your award!
3. Give a brief story of how your blog got started, and give a piece or two of advice to new bloggers.
4. Thank whoever nominated you, and provide a link to their blog.
5. For first award above only (the one with trophy cups on it): List who you’ve nominated in the post and link your post to Edge of Night.

Because the rules for both of these awards are exactly the same, I feel I can just answer Q’s. 2 & 3 once, and nominate fellow bloggers for either one or the other. So I’ll get on with it ….

Q.3 My blog took some time to actually come into existence. Several people had suggested to me that, as an author, a blog would be a useful thing to have. Unfortunately, I had no idea what having a blog was all about, or how to go about setting one up. But I resolved to have a go, and in May 2014, I set up my blog – or rather, I partially set up my blog. Then I left it sitting there for three months until, towards the end of August, one of my daughters (Louise at thestoytellersabode) also decided to set up a blog and we worked on them together. My first post was done with great trepidation. Like all new bloggers, I was very apprehensive about how the content of the post would be received. As a writer of historical fiction, I decided that my focus had to be two-pronged: some posts would focus on history and some on writing.

And basically, that’s what I did for the next few months. I was determined to finish Book 2 of my trilogy by Christmas, and so I wrote very few posts – sometimes with a couple of weeks between them. It wasn’t the best way to ‘kick start’ a new blog, and consequently, it got little attention. Things improved a little when I started including British ‘traditions and celebrations’ into my posts. I found several to write about, starting off with ‘Bonfire Night’ (November 5^th) followed by some of our Christmas traditions. I’ve continued to look at other traditions as they occur throughout this year.

What really helped to improve things for me was becoming involved in flash fiction challenges. I still continue with traditions and writing historical posts, and I also do a few posts about travel. But I’ve really enjoyed the challenges. I would advise any new blogger to have a go at the many challenges offered on WordPress, whether they involve writing, photography or whatever. There are also Blogging 101 and Photography 101 for new bloggers – neither of which I did, due to lack of time. Louise did Photography 101 and found it a great way to meet fellow bloggers and help her list of followers to grow. The other way to get new followers is by following other bloggers yourself – something else I did little of at first. In truth, I do far too little of it, even now.

Much of what I’ve said so far is not so much advice on how to achieve a successful blog as how not to! So I hope anyone reading this will just do the opposite of what I initially did. But becoming involved in community activities, connecting with other bloggers and posting often are three things I think really help. Then there’s the ‘Meet and Greet’ that some bloggers offer on their sites. That’s something I know I should try…

Connecting with other bloggers is what WordPress is all about to me. It’s interesting, educational and lots of fun – and vital if you want to keep people visiting your blog. But, as with the challenges, particularly the writing ones, it can be very time-consuming. So much so, that I’ve been considering putting my blog ‘on hold’ for a while whilst I get on with Book 3. I’m not nearly as far on with the book as I’d planned to be by September, so something has to give. Perhaps I’ll just go back to what I did before last Christmas and do fewer posts. I’m still thinking about that…

So here are my nominees:

1. Joycelin at tribalmysticstories