Did you miss me? Because I missed you... each and every one of you. I feel like we have a lot of catching up to do.
"Soooo....what is up? What's the 411? What has everybody been up to? What's the hot gossip? Tell me everything. What have you guys been listening to? What are the cool jams?"
The first person to tell me what movie and character this above quote is from will get an extra entry (if you choose to participate) in my upcoming contest. Yes, I DID say contest! You didn't think I was lying when I told you all I was planning a contest for April, did you? Well, shame on you if you did! Check back Tuesday, the 20th, for my first official contest. You must be a follower of my blog to enter... and you must love cheese. Okay, cheese actually has nothing to do with it, but I thought it would sound more "official-like" with two entry rules. More to come...
On the author front, my fabulous web designer, Denise Biondo, is working on my website drafts as we speak... er, type. Sometime soon my author website will be up and this blog will be one of its internal pages. If you're one of those types who's not fond of change, I'm warning you now that my blog template WILL BE CHANGING (the horror!) when my full website is up and running. Hence I may not be able to post all the various blog awards you've given me anymore (thank you for the awards!!). That said, I have several more awards that I want to acknowledge and post now, but I won't be passing any more on because there are too many great blogs to choose from, and to be honest, figuring out who doesn't already have the awards I want to pass along makes my eyes cross. For the love of uncrossed eyes, I hope you all understand. If, however, you want any of my awards, let me know, and I'll be happy to pass them along to you.
Without further ado, I shall acknowledge the awards now...
I'M SENDING BIG THANKS TO:
Medeia Sharif for the Awesomesauce Award and the Super Comments Award! Medeia also tagged me in a fun Q&A blog post which I will be participating in and posting at some point in the future...
Claire had to invent a fictional fact about each person she chose to pass the Soulmates Award onto. Since I won't be passing it along, I thought I'd at least share the awesome fact Claire invented about me: Amy Holder's the current Chocolate Diving Champion of Pennsylvania. To win this title she dove into 6 feet of chocolates to retrieve a teddy bear, with a time of 15.26 seconds. Hahahaha! I love it!
Thanks again to all the wonderful bloggers who've passed along blog awards to me!
Make sure to come back on Tuesday to check out and participate in my contest!
Look Forward to: I have something up my sleeve for next week. Check back on Monday and you might be inspired. Also, stay tuned for my first contest sometime in April.
Cheer about: As promised in a previous post, I'm passing on a few blog awards to ELEVEN bloggers (to pay homage to my 2011 pub date).
Okay, maybe you can handle the truth, but the title seems so much more interesting with a Jack Nicholson quote, don't you think? Anyhow, it's time for me to come clean with my slick-von-trickster antics from the truth/lies game in my previous post. Thanks to everyone who played along... now it's time to see if any of your guesses were right:
1) I'm allergic to chocolate, but love it so much that I'll deal with the hives in order to eat it.
FALSE! I'd definitely suffer from a permanent case of hives if I had a chocolate allergy!
2) I own a show dog who has won two state championships.
FALSE! My pups are beauteous in my eyes, but neither one is a show dog. I adopted one of my dogs right before she was scheduled to be put to sleep at the pound. My other dog is half blind and was rescued from a puppy mill situation.
3) I was spat on by a llama when I was five.
FALSE! I've never been spit on by a llama because I'm the llama whisperer... referenced in the photo below. My sister has been spit on by llamas countless times though...which makes this story all the more hilarious.
4) I had an eyebrow ring when I was 18, and now I have trouble plucking that eyebrow without sneezing.
TRUE! Believe it or not, in a fit of teenage rebellion, I shocked my parents to bits by getting an eyebrow ring on my 18th birthday. I kept the piercing for a year, but will forever have to deal with the havoc it caused on my eyebrow nerves. Plucking my right eyebrow usually leads to sneezing nowadays.
5) I graduated high school a year early...but then I took the five year plan to graduate college... so it evened out in the end.
FALSE! I graduated high school on time. And I took the four and a half year plan to graduate college... it was just too much fun not to stay an extra semester.
6) I've never flown on a plane and never plan to if I can avoid it.
FALSE! I've flown on many planes over my lifetime. My most recent plane ride was to Dallas, and the time before that I went to Costa Rica.
7) I lived in Chicago for a few years and had the pleasure of meeting Oprah.
FALSE! Although I did live in the Chicago area for a while, I never met Oprah.
Thanks again to everyone who played along. Congratulations to Tahereh for guessing correctly!
Also, I'd like to extend a huge thank you to Nicole over at One Significant Moment at a Time for giving me the prolific blogger award! Please go check out and follow her awesome blog!
Stay tuned for a future post to see which bloggers I pass these fab awards on to...
I was honored to receive the creative writer (AKA - bold faced liar) blog award from Medeia Sharif, a fellow writer and debut author. Her YA debut, THE BESTEST RAMADAN EVER, is being published by Flux in 2011. Check out her fabulous blog here.
I was so excited to get this award because I've been secretly wanting to play the truth/lies game that goes along with it. The point of the game is to list six lies and one truth, and then you (yes, I'm talking to you) have to guess which one is the true statement. PS: I am a horrible liar in person...but maybe on paper (or blog background) I can be slick-von-trickster.
Which one is my truth?
1) I'm allergic to chocolate, but love it so much that I'll deal with the hives in order to eat it.
2) I own a show dog who has won two state championships.
3) I was spat on by a llama when I was five.
4) I had an eyebrow ring when I was 18, and now I have trouble plucking that eyebrow without sneezing.
5) I graduated high school a year early...but then I took the five year plan to graduate college... so it evened out in the end.
6) I've never flown on a plane and never plan to if I can avoid it.
7) I lived in Chicago for a few years and had the pleasure of meeting Oprah.
Please-oh-please play along by leaving me a comment with your best guess. Check back in a few days for the truth and nothing but the truth!
In other randomness, I handed in my acks 'n ded (acknowledgements and dedication) for my book after re-writing them 937 times - hooray! I decided to go with the less is more concept to avoid being too long winded. Because of this, my hair straightening iron will be very upset that I left her out... therefore I'm acknowledging her here: Dear Chi Straightening Iron, thank you for straightening my hair with such precision. Without you, my hair would be frizzy and unmanageable...and how would I be able to write in that condition? The short answer is, I wouldn't.
Finally, in honor of St. Patty's Day tomorrow and my partial Irish heritage, I'd like to leave you with two of my favorite Irish sayings:
This is a bit overdue, but I'm sending many thanks to Alissa Grosso for bestowing me with the creative writer blog award! Alissa is a fellow YA author whose debut novel, THE BALDERDASH SEMESTERS, will be published in 2011. You can check out Alissa's fabulous blog here.
Now I have the responsibility of passing along the creative writer award to five other bloggers. All of the writers I've picked have blogs that are fun to read, so please take a look at each one (if you're not already following them)... you won't be disappointed.
Without further ado, the award goes to:
1) Carrie Harris - Carrie is a hilarious zombie-loving, self-confessed lunatic. Not only that, she's one heck of a writer. Her debut YA novel, NO PAIN, NO BRAIN, will be published in 2011. Check out her laugh-out-loud blog here.
2) Keri Mikulski - Keri is an athletically inclined author who's bringing sporty spice to YA novels. She's combined her two passions (writing and sports) to create her fantastic PRETTY TOUGH series. Check out her blog and website here.
3) Kathy McCullough - Kathy is a talented writer whose debut YA novel, DELANEY COLLINS, F.G., is being published in 2011. She has an author blog that you can check out here. Also, the delightful main character of her debut novel, Delaney Collins, has her own blog that you can check out here.
4) Sydney Salter - Sydney is a fellow Houghton Mifflin Harcourt/Graphia author. Her books MY BIG NOSE AND OTHER NATURAL DISASTERS, and JUNGLE CROSSING are available now. Her new book, SWOON AT YOUR OWN RISK, will be available in April of this year. Check out her blog here.
5) Tess Hilmo - Tess is a multi-talented writer whose debut middle grade novel, WITH A NAME LIKE LOVE, is being published in 2011. Check out her blog here and her book trailer here (she composed the music herself - amazing!).
Now that I've passed on the award torch, it's up to you five to continue the flame by passing it along (if you feel so inclined) to five others in a chain-blog-Olympics-esque way.
On an equally important side note, Victoria Schwab (a fellow debut author and Elevensie) created a pretty awesome video about what makes her a rebel. Check it out below, along with her other YARebels videos on YouTube:
Location: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States
I'm the author of THE LIPSTICK LAWS, a young adult novel published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt on April 4, 2011. I'm repped by Sarah Davies of Greenhouse Literary Agency.
