I was surprised to receive the Versatile Blogger Award (VBA) from esteemed author and blogger Ella Medler. Thank you, Ella! It’s an honor. Ella is a super duper colleague in the writing field. Please check out her awesome work!

Versatile Blogger Award (VBA)

What is it?

As far as I can tell — details are rather sketchy and only the creator knows for sure — this lofty-sounding award is basically a mutual admiration society where bloggers recognize their peers for writing quality blogs that touched them in some way. The VBAs honor the blogger rather than specific posts. It’s a chance for bloggers to pat themselves on the back like the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences does with the Oscars. Until someone starts giving out Blogscars, the VBAs will have to suffice.

What are the criteria?

If you are nominated, you’ve been awarded the Versatile Blogger Award. I nominated 15 outstanding bloggers below. Congratulations!

Thank the person who gave you this award. That’s common courtesy.

Thank you, Ella. Thank you, thank you, thank you!

Include a link to their blog. That’s also common courtesy — if you can figure out how to do it.

Visit Ella’s blog at http://ellamedler.wordpress.com/. You’ll be glad you did.

Next, select 15 blogs/bloggers that you’ve recently discovered or follow regularly. (I would add, pick blogs or bloggers that are excellent!)

The envelope, please…

Nominate those 15 bloggers for the Versatile Blogger Award — you might include a link to this site.

And the nominees/winners are (in alphabetical order):

1. August McLaughlin – Savor the Storm (http://augustmclaughlin.wordpress.com/)
2. CR Hiatt – McSwain & Beck (http://mcswainandbeck.com/)
3. Craves Adventure – Our Travels Out West (http://cravesadventure.wordpress.com/)
4. CrissCrossingIndia – Adventure Travel and Photography Across India (http://crisscrossingindia.wordpress.com/)
5. David C. Cassidy – Because Life is a Really Good Story (http://davidccassidy.com/)
6. Donna B. McNicol – 2 Taking a 5th (http://www.2takinga5th.com/)
7. KG Arndell – Musings of a Dark Fantasy Writer (http://kgarndell.com/)
8. Jeff Whelan – SpaceOrville (http://jeffwhelan.wordpress.com/)
9. Lada Ray (http://ladaray.wordpress.com/)
10. Lesley Carter – Bucket List Publications (http://lesleycarter.wordpress.com/)
11. Pranjal Borthakur (http://pranjalborthakur.wordpress.com/)
12. R.M. Wilburn – Ponderous Things… (http://ponderous-max.blogspot.com/)
13. Sheila Pierson – I Write, Therefore I Am (http://sheilapierson.wordpress.com/)
14. The Jumping Polar Bear (http://jumpingpolarbear.com/)
15. Vanna Smythe – Fantasy Author (http://vannasmythe.com/)

Congratulations, winners!

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

Hmm, seven things about me. Okay, here goes:

1. In the past decade I’ve lived in nine different locations in five countries on four continents.

2. I proposed to my wife on one knee in a gravel parking lot. She said “yes” anyway after I whined about how much the rocks hurt my kneecap.

3. I joined the Cub Scouts for the first time with my son and am his den leader. I did not participate in scouts as a kid, and this is the first time in my son’s young life that he’s lived where there’s a troop. It’s been fun scouting vicariously through him. Today we built and shot off bottle (water) rockets. It brings out the kid in me!

4. My favorite sport is baseball, but I took a liking to cricket when I lived in Africa because it looks like baseball with different rules.

5. I have a falsetto singing voice like Roy Orbison and Chris Isaak and love to belt out the karaoke version of “Oh! Pretty Woman.”

6. I enjoy getting to know people from around the world. One of my favorite things to do is to meet up in one location with friends I met elsewhere. Today, in fact, I’m getting together in Bangkok, Thailand with friends I met several years ago in Seoul, Korea.

7. One of the toughest challenges living overseas is missing those foods that you love but can’t buy abroad. I miss dishes from my favorite restaurants, not to mention perishable foods that I can’t ship. Thank goodness I can buy and ship beef jerky, cereal, and granola bars. But every once in a while I suffer from store-bought Christmas eggnog withdrawals.

Congratulations to the new VBA winners, and thanks again to Ella Medler for nominating me!

 

M.G. Edwards is a writer of books and stories in the mystery, thriller and science fiction-fantasy genres. He also writes travel adventures. He is author of Kilimanjaro: One Man’s Quest to Go Over the Hill, a non-fiction account of his attempt to summit Mount Kilimanjaro, Africa’s highest mountain. His collection of short stories called Real Dreams: Thirty Years of Short Stories available as an e-book and in print on Amazon.com. He lives in Bangkok, Thailand with his wife Jing and son Alex.

For more books or stories by M.G. Edwards, visit his web site at www.mgedwards.com or his blog, World Adventurers. Contact him at me@mgedwards.com, on Facebook, on Google+, or @m_g_edwards on Twitter.

© 2012 Brilliance Press. All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted without the written consent of the author.