Scrap-tacular

The very generous Brenton Tomlinson has bestowed the Honest S(crap) award upon me, and I am honored.

The Award and Rules:

This award is bestowed upon a fellow blogger whose blog content or design is, in the giver’s opinion, brilliant.

The rules are as follows:

1. When accepting this auspicious award, you must write a post bragging about it, including the name of the misguided soul who thinks you deserve such acclaim, and link back to the said person so everyone knows she/he is real.

2. Choose a minimum of 5 blogs that you find brilliant in content or design. Or improvise by including bloggers who have no idea who you are because you don’t have five friends. Show the five random victims’ names and links and leave a harassing comment informing them that they were prized with Honest Weblog. Well, there’s no prize, but they can keep the nifty icon.

3. List at least ten (10) honest things about yourself. Then pass it on!

Drum roll please (I don't know if these folks have been nominated, and I don't know if they want to be, but here goes):

Robert Swartwood - brutally honest and one heck of a writer. Robert wrote the best one sentence story I've seen in a long time, "Lea & Perrins", and you can read it at Lamination Colony.

K.C. Shaw - inspires us all to be in love with novel writing. Her story, "Sand-Skin Man" from Beneath Ceaseless Skies was brilliant.

Brendan P. Myers - shares his writing lessons with all comers. We also share a TOC in the forthcoming Dead World: Undead Stories.

Rebecca Nazar - has a unique and (pardon the riff on her blog title) whimsical voice, when her writing isn't meandering down the dark side, that is.

Jeremy Kelly - is on vacation, so won't it be a surprise to win this prestigious award when he returns. I appreciate his dark tone and love of Tom Waits.

Ten honest things:

1. I prefer wearing glasses over contacts because I'm lazy.

2. I haven't taken down my Halloween decorations in my classroom. Why should I?

3. I used to hate, absolutely loathe, Shakespeare. Now, I can't have enough. My students groan, but we read a play in every class I teach. Of course I prefer the tragedies.

4. The scars on my face are from a biking accident. I like to say I was "mountain biking". I was really just on a little jaunt around my neighborhood when the rear brake line snapped. Since the front brakes were intact, I was sent over the handlebars, face first. I can't remember four hours of my life...it's not exactly like being asleep (I know time has passed when I sleep). Those four hours are just gone.

5. I never wanted to be a writer when I was growing up. I always wanted to be a paleontologist.

6. I never wanted to be a teacher when I was growing up. (see #6 above)

7. I've had three tremendous school-boy crushes in my life. One was on my fourth-grade teacher, Mrs. Reed. The second was on a classmate in fifth grade. She really liked horses, so I bought myself a rather lame unicorn diary as if to say, "I like horses, too". The third was on a girl in high school who said I reminded her of Lloyd Dobler from Say Anything. I've been a John Cusack fan since.

8. Although I'm 6'3", I've never played organized basketball.

9. We thought our second son was going to be a girl. Her name would have been Ellen. I named a character in my first book Ellen instead.

10. I still call Star Wars IV: A New Hope by its real name: Star Wars.

Honesty is the best policy. I guess.