Tuesday 14 January 2014

The Liebster Award!

Hey, wow! I've been awarded The Liebster Award... now this isn't something I normally put up there, so bear with me.  

I was nominated by The Road to Writing, along with nine other bloggers who love to write!  Yay!  So, here's how it works... you guys find out a lot of stuff about me, and then go and nominate a whole lot of other flash fiction writer/bloggers.  

This is going to be fun, right?  Yep!

Okay, here's AJ Bauers' questions:




What is your favorite flash fiction that you have written?




Ohh… you’re asking me a tough question there.  I love all my flash fiction – as writing to me is a work of love.  I did enjoy writing ‘Lovecraft’s Dinner Party’ and 'Wink Murder'… they were favourites of mine.  With the first one, I was working off a myth that has been hanging around about a famous writer, whereas with the other, I was working off ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’… wonderful how stories and writers can do that isn’t it?
 
If you had a superpower, what would it be?



To be a fly on the wall at the right time and witness all the big events at exactly the right times!  Yeah… I’d love to have the good old Tardis power… witness, but not change anything.
   
What is the number one item on your bucket list?



Right now, it’s to travel the USA on a shoestring budget and enjoy the cities as I see them… and bus it, fly it or hire a RV if needs be to get where I need to. And I don’t care how long it takes, I want to see the great sights, the not so great sights and the stuff nobody gets to see.

List 5 of your favorite books



LOTR
The Stand
Christine
Other Colours by Orhan Pamuk
Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemmingway

Who has inspired you most for your writing?

Stephen King… most definitely.  I do love JRR Tolkien and Raymond E Feist; they are both wonderful writers of sci-fi fantasy.  But King is the most definitely my first choice. 

What made you decide to start a blog?


I wanted to review my book collection for people who hadn’t read what I had… and I have a varied book collection… really varied.  My original blog is ‘My Reading List’… this one came long just by chance to be published and it doesn’t cost me anything…  really I wanted to entertain people; and I do. 
 
What is the best piece of advice you have ever read or received about writing?


‘You want to write a book?  Well, that’s what you have to do every day… write something.  I doesn’t matter what it is, just write it.’ – I’ve been told this by a lot of writers, famous or not.

 
What do you hope to accomplish in the year 2014 (writing or otherwise)?



Finish ‘Fry Nelson – Bounty Hunter’ and then work on last year’s collection of flash fiction and publish them in a book of works.  I also run a craft hobby business called Crafty Pegs on Facebook where I paint hand-painted clothes pegs, pencils and - just recently - tiny little jugs.  I'm going to the Creative Markets each month this year with my stock of those things to make a bit of money... so that's something else I'm working on too as an artist.


What is your favorite and least favorite book to film adaption?


There’s no favourites when it comes to book to film adaptations… the directors and script-writers always miss something the writer of the book is trying to get across.  There’s always a fail in the details.  

List 5 of your favorite characters (books, movies, or otherwise)

 
Stu Redman – The Stand 
Roland Gilead – The Dark Tower Series 
Dorian Gray – The Picture of Dorian Gray 
I don’t know who else to put here… as these are my three favourites… and they haven’t really changed over times. 

Now, there's a little problem with the next thing I have to do with the award.  I don't know that many blogs that do Flash Fiction... I write it, sure, but I don't frequent that many authors of the genre.  There's Chuck Wendig's site where I've had the chance to read quite a few people's work, but I just can't decide who to pick, and find it very difficult to link all of these things back to here (and my blogger screws up a lot no thanks to my computer - it's not a great one).  So, I'm unable to really do as many as there's required which is 10, but I can only do about two or three.  Please forgive me for this.

Matthew Eaten: Writer 
Ver Les Etoiles 
McKKenzie: Random Words From a Random Writer  

Now, my list of questions, in no particular order:

Have you always loved the written word?

How many books do you own in your collection? This includes traditional and e-books

Are there any characters you've created that you have enjoyed and included in other books and stories, or do they all have just one use only?

When you get rid of an evil, horrible character, do you have a little party?  Or is business as usual?

Is writing your first passion, or are there other hobbies and interests you do with your time?

List your top 10 books of all time

What are your hard and fast rules of writing that you stick by no matter what?

Have you met any famous authors?  If so, who?  And did they turn out to be nice or different to how you expected/not expected?