Blog Awards

Despite being missing and grouchy for most of the past fortnight I've managed to get not one but two awards! Yay! I got the Liebster award from the lovely Scott Stillwell, which is lovely to get. I won't pass it on though, because I've done that a few weeks ago when I received it before.

The second award was from the fantastic Alicia Gregoire. It's the 7x7 Link Award, where you pick 7 blog posts to fit the superlative given. So here are mine!

Most Beautiful: I don't really do beauty, even in blog posts. If my blog posts were a cartoon character they'd be Velma Dinkley. (Note to self: if I got my hair cut in a bob/pudding bowl I could totally carry this look off, btw)

Most Helpful: Five Top Twitter Tips for Writers In my pre-campaign days, this was also my most popular post. The internet loves advice posts, people.

Most Popular: My entry for the first campaign challenge, The Door Swung Open. I think it's going to be the prologue for Ravensborough II.

Most Controversial:  Any post where I attempt to point out that Ireland is not all Riverdance, Guinness, thatched cottages and shamrocks does not do well. Oh, and that Jameson is pronounced 'Jem-eh-son' not 'James son'. Maybe I'll pretend that I do indeed operate my blog from a tiny cottage surrounded by sheep, potato fields, and a group of peasants singing Danny Boy. Which just happens to have a fast broadband connection.


Most Surprisingly Successful: My post on How First Aid Ruined My Life

Most Underrated: I have low self-esteem. I think all of my posts are over-rated.

Most Prideworthy:  Any post where I attempt to point out that Ireland is not all Riverdance, Guinness, thatched cottages and shamrocks. Oh, and that Jameson is pronounced 'Jem-eh-son' not 'James son'.


The seven people I'm passing this award on to are:


Scott Stillwell

Laura Toeniskoetter

Alleged Author

Krista M

Charissa Weaks

Caitlin Vincent

Alexis Bass

Irresistibly Sweet Blog Award

I love this award! It gives me an insane craving for meringue, but hey what else is new?

It was given to me by the fantastic Miss Cole. Her blog is great, by the way. Definitely one to check out.

The rules say that I need to share ten random facts about myself. I'm not sure if I've mentioned some of them before, if I have I apologise.

1: I didn't drink much coffee until March of this year. Now, myself and my husband spend so much on ground coffee that it doesn't bear thinking about. I actually avoid thinking about it.

2: I was an only child until I was fourteen. Ten years later I'm the eldest of seven. I got the benefits of being an only child when I was growing up, and now I have the benefits of being part of a large, close family.

3:  My husband is a journalist and editor. He edits my fiction to catch my grammatical errors. We have geeky conversations about the many roles of commas.

4: When I was a teenager I went on a school trip to Belarus. The hostel we stayed in was in the middle of a forest with Chechen rebel soldiers surrounding it. Luckily, they didn't bother us.

5: I prefer the world in my imagination to reality.

6: Winter is my favourite season, and I like the rain.

7: My grandad worked in the Guinness brewery.

8: My favourite musician is Bjork. I saw her play in Belfast three years ago, and she was amazing.

9: My dream house would be beside the sea. Still in Dublin, but beside the sea.

10: I started writing seriously a few days after my fibromyalgia diagnosis in 2009.

I said last week that I'd hold a contest to celebrate reaching the 150 follower mark. I'm now at 174, thanks to the campaign. I'll pick some books this week and hopefully announce it on Friday.

Check-In-Tuesday

Ok, so I don't have a blogging schedule. In fact, I don't have a schedule at all. I see other writers have certain topics that they talk about on their blog on certain days. This sounds great in theory, but to be honest is probably more organisation than I could handle. I'm going to try and bring some order to my life, slowly though, in case it suddenly becomes too much for me.

I've decided that I'll do a weekly posting of where I am in my writerly journey. If nothing else it will keep me accountable. Monday may be the natural day for this, but it just doesn't have the same alliterative cadence of Check-in-Tuesday. And what writer picks practicality over sound and rhythm?

WIP: Despite the best intentions of Bunowrimo, I've only managed to write 11,224 words of my current WIP. This was because polishing my other novel for submission took longer than I anticipated. That being said, I've written a third of the first draft which is fairly respectable.

Works out on submission: One.

Rejections: Two. I was expecting to feel the crushing sense of doom that I've read about so often, but I didn't. Now that I'm feeling smug and happy with myself, the next letter will very probably send me running into the garden shed, sobbing and screeching that my life is over. Or something.

Plot Bunnies Avoided: One.

High point of the week: Feeling like a domestic goddess when I baked a batch of home-made cookies.

Low point of the week: Realising that bona fide domestic goddesses do not need the help of a Google search engine to work out how to change the bag on the vacuum cleaner.

What about you guys? How are you getting on this week?

Looking for opinions on author platforms...

All us aspiring authors know that if we are to be successful we need to build a social platform. Every book or article on becoming a successful writer tells us this. Yet when we go out to create one there are almost too many options. I have a Blogger account and that's about it. I have personal Facebook and Twitter accounts, but I don't want to use those for networking because most people in my real life don't know that I write so seriously.

I'm starting to think I should set up writing accounts on Twitter and Facebook. But then there's Wordpress, Tumblr and personal websites. My question is, just how many of these things are necessary when you're still at the 'aspiring' stage? What tools do you all use?