The Versatile Blogger Award!

Fellow blogger Rachel Lynn Brody has nominated me for the Versatile Blogger Award!

Here are the rules for winning the award:

Thank the person who gave you this award. THANK YOU RACHEL!

Include a link to their blog: I Wrote This

Nominate 15 bloggers for the Versatile Blogger Award and include a link to their site.

Finally, tell the person who nominated you 7 things about yourself.

I am thrilled to nominate the following terrific bloggers for the award:

1. Graham’s Crackers – Graham writes about publishing, politics, pop culture, philosophical pondering and pushing people’s limits and reserves his snark for only deserving targets. Most of all he’s a nice guy who isn’t afraid to post kitten photos on Twitter. 🙂

2. Drew Chial – Drew is a writer and former reader for a film company who writes posts about writing, pop culture and occasionally politics. He is often satirical and always insightful. It’s worth it to visit his site just to look at the creative way he illustrates his posts–with pictures of himself.

3. A Small Press Life – Mae is a writer of non-fiction and prose who is committed to small press publishing. She also writes about classic movies.

4. Speakeasy – Kristina’s blog about classic movies and Hollywood history is amazing fun (and she illustrates her posts with the most awesome gifs).

5. Fraking Films – If you want to stay informed about everything happening in the pop culture world as it happens, follow Fraking Films!

6. Finding Faeries – Writer Kathy Palm’s blog is fanciful and fun. Kathy is a fellow winner of Project REUTSway and very supportive of her fellow “REUTSway-ites!”

7. Nightwolf’s Corner – Kisa is a writer, animator, and editor with REUTS Publications. Loads of great advice for writers, and for those who are interested in martial arts, too!

8. Auston Habershaw – Auston is a science fiction and fantasy writer. His blog covers his career as well as the crazy ideas kicking around in his head. He recently found out he is winner of the Writers of the Future Contest.

9. Cassandra Page – Cassandra writes urban fantasy (her first book is set to debut later this year). She blogs about writing and occasionally reviews books.

10. Cite Something! – Amanda MacGregor reviews young adult books and covers the YA publishing world. Amanda is very passionate about her subject and a great advocate for YA and YA writers.

11. Pop! Goes the Reader – a book review blog that specializes predominantly in young adult fiction and adult romance. Jen and I bonded on Twitter over our mutual grief over the fate of Richard Harrow on Boardwalk Empire. Her blog is a must for those looking for the best in contemporary YA and adult romance.

12. Summer Weir – Summer is a writer and another fellow winner of Project REUTSway. Like Kathy, she’s very supportive of those who participated in PR and writers in general.

13. Creative Writing With the Crimson League – Victoria’s blog is a treasure trove for all writers looking to learn and improve their craft.

14. Notes on a Spanish Valley – Sandra’s blog about living in rural Andalusia. Since I was born in Seville, Spain, Andalusia has a special place in my heart. Sandra is a writer and journalist. Her first novel will be released this September.

15. Sidekick Reviews – Wonderfully entertaining site about current popular culture. Great recaps of shows like Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and Game of Thrones.

And now, for 7 things about myself:

1. I’m Jewish but I attended Catholic school for a year. When my father was stationed in Spain, my parents couldn’t afford to send my sister and me to the American school, so they sent us to a convent school instead. I was only five years old but still have very vivid memories of the convent (it was very old) and the nuns.

2. My family was once suspected of cheating in a bicycle race. We took a trip to Spain during the early 70s (after we moved back to the U.S. permanently). A young friend of the family was bicycling through Europe and met up with us in Spain. We put his bicycle on the luggage rack of our rental car. As we drove from Seville up the coast, we noticed lots of people gathered on the side of the road. They kept pointing at our car and some looked totally shocked as we passed them. Cars were not that common in Spain at the time but it still seemed odd to us.

We stopped in a town for the night. The next morning, my mother struck up a conversation with a man who told her the town was the finish line for a bicycle race. We had been driving ahead of the racers the entire day!

3. I knew the dog that appeared on the iconic National Lampoon Magazine cover. The same friend who took the bicycle trip through Europe owned him. The dog’s name was Cheeseface and he was the most awesome canine I have ever known in my life (sorry to my late dog Wiley, but Cheeseface was in a class of his own).

Cheeseface’s owner took him on modelling auditions and he got several jobs in print ads. He was chosen for the National Lampoon Magazine cover, which at the time and to this day is somewhat controversial. Ironically and tragically, Cheeseface was killed by a gun a few years later. (Someone–possibly living on a neighboring farm in Vermont–is believed to have deliberately shot him.)

I still miss that dog. My mom used to say he was a person in a dog suit.

4. I was into the Tudor period of history WAY before it was fashionable. My parents took me to see the movie Anne of the Thousand Days for my ninth birthday and it kicked off a life-long fascination with the period. In fact, the very first thing I ever wrote was a play about Anne Boleyn.

5. My cat Cleo originally belonged to my mother, then she belonged to my sister, and now she’s mine. My mother adopted Cleo thinking she would get along just fine with her other cat Pandora. That did not work out, so she gave her to my sister, who had adopted Cleo’s brother. When my sister and nephew had to live with us for several months while waiting for the purchase for their new house to go through, Cleo became attached to me. Since there was a limit on the number of cats in my sister’s new apartment building, Cleo became my cat.

6. I was one of the first people in the country to have laparoscopic surgery. I found out I needed gall bladder surgery and was terrified of having it done. I found an article about laparoscopy in a magazine, which was brand new at the time. I didn’t care. I found a doctor who did the surgery and was probably only around the 10th person in the country to have it done this way. It was so new the nurse didn’t believe me when I told her I was going home the next day.

7. My mother and I got travel tips from famed filmmaker Werner Herzog (Fitzcarraldo, Encounters at the End of the World). We both worked for New Yorker Films at the time, which distributed several of his films, including Aguirre, The Wrath of God. He visited the office one day and was thrilled to hear we were planning a trip to Peru. He gave us lots of advice, especially about the town of Iquitos on the Amazon River, near where he shot Fitzcarraldo.

He recommended we visit a bar on the waterfront in Iquitos. “It’s not really a bar, it’s more like a shack. No, not really a shack, it’s sort of made out of cardboard. But it’s very nice and the people are really nice. Don’t pay attention to the vultures and rats. Really, it’s very nice.”