Y’all, I hath been nominated by the lovely Miss Special for my very first Sunshine Blogger Award, which elicited all the squees from yours truly 😁

The Rules

• Display the award’s official logo somewhere on your blog.
• Thank the person who nominated you.
• Provide a link to your nominator’s blog.
• Answer your nominator’s questions.
• Nominate up to eleven bloggers.
• Ask your nominees eleven questions.
• Notify your nominees by commenting on at least one of their blog posts.

The Prompts

1. Which of your blog posts are you the most proud of?

Oh dear, oh my. How to choose?! 😭 However, I suppose it would be all the ones about heroes – What Makes Heroes, Lieutenant?, My Top 10 Fictional Heroes, and My Top 10 Fictional Heroines.

2. Where do you go for inspiration?

*stares at the wall*

No, no. That is a terrible source for inspiration. I guess my sources depend on the book. If I’m stuck, I might go looking for pictures that match my characters’ vibes or the plot, or I might brainstorm with my brother or other writer buddies. Sometimes when I’m writing I’ll listen to music – movie soundtracks *can* be useful for this, but it can be hard to focus on writing if I’m listening to anything with words. 😆 Ultimately I’d love to read/watch books and movies that match my WIP’s genre and theme, but sadly I write mostly action and war stories, and it’s nearly impossible to find anything clean in that genre. 😭

For my current WIP, I’ve found inspiration from my cat, the Combat! tv show (my MC and I are both fans 🤭), my dad’s knowledge of retro music, a previous plot bunny, a Lego video, a website I use for research, war footage, and The Outsiders.

3. How do you live with justify killing off a character? (Asking as someone who has resolved to do it and then not carried out with it on three separate occasions.)

Ahem, this is a very difficult question, because I feel very deeply about my characters, and it hurts me to have to axe them from the story. 💔😭 Really, it depends on the situation. (“To break my readers’ hearts” is not a good reason. Just sayin’.) With the characters I’ve killed/will have to kill in this WIP, my main justification is that it’s war, and war is not an author. ☹️ In previous books, I had to kill characters so that another character would have to mature or be willing to move on from a situation. And sometimes it would just cause too many complications if they had a redemption arc or remained alive; therefore they must go. 😆

(There are plenty of dead characters living rent-free in my head. No, that’s not as bad as it sounds. 😆)

4. Who’s your favorite character? Or the one that comes to your mind the most often?

Sgt. Chip Saunders from Combat! (Yes, here we go again! 😃) He’s my top hero overall, I love him to pieces, and I have two pictures of him and two of his quotes up on my “motivation wall”. Since I’ve fangirled about him at length in other posts (and I’ll probably do it again next month for his birthday) I’ll refrain and leave you with this lovely collage I found online. 💕

5. What’s one of your favorite Bible verses and why?

The LORD is my strength and my shield; my heart trusted in Him, and I am helped: therefore my heart greatly rejoiceth; and with my song will I praise Him.

Psalm 28:7

I love this verse because over the years I’ve gone through some very dark times (multiple causes which I don’t care to go into here). But God has been faithful and helped me through every single one of them. So I will indeed praise Him! 🥰

6. What was your first blog post? (Because yes, I am a fan of nostalgia.)

Hmm, I guess that would be the first post I wrote on my Goodreads blog, before I switched my website to WordPress. It was for Talk Like a Pirate Day 2023.

7. What circumstances led to you writing your first book?

You mean that very, very first one that was terrible and we don’t talk about anymore?

Oh boy . . . that was a dumpster fire – the book was about a nurse in WWII, but I don’t remember what led to me writing it, honestly. 😂 I had attempted writing a family mystery series (ala Boxcar Children or Bobbsey Twins), but gave up on that when I couldn’t even finish a full chapter and decided to switch to WWII instead. And I was about 12, so . . . there’s a reason it’ll never see the light of day again 🤷‍♀️

8. One book you’ve read that you would recommend to all audiences? (After the Bible.)

Man, that’s hard, because everybody has so many different tastes, reading levels, and standards. But I might say Mr. Popper’s Penguins, because it’s an absolutely HILARIOUS book that never fails to crack me up, even if I’m in bed with an awful case of the flu. (Which I was, last time I read it, and it had me in stitches. 😆)

9. How do you fit writing into your schedule?

*makes choking noises*

Well, I usually try to work on my graphic design job from about 10-4, with of course a break for lunch. It can be tricky trying to fit writing in, especially if my brain is fried and I’ve had an overdose of screen time. But I try to write in the mornings after reading my Bible (since I try – important word, try – to get up at 6:30), a little bit before and after lunch, and after I knock off work for the day. But usually I just squeeze a few sentences in whenever I can scrounge up the time 🫠

10. What’s the first book you remember reading?

Man, I don’t know. I do remember some tiny books with bright cartoon animals, called “I Can Jump!”, “I Can Fly!”, “I Can Swim!”, etc, that I really loved when I was little.

11. Is a hotdog a sandwich or a taco? Or is there a separate classification you have in mind?

Uhhhh . . . 😐 most similar to a taco, I guess? As long as you’re eating it in the bun. But it’s really neither, it’s a hotdog, and I don’t much like hotdogs unless they’ve got cheese and Hormel chili on them. Picky of me, I know 😓

The People

One of my usual suspects just did this, and another one nominated me, so we’ll go with:

• Katja @Little Blossoms for Jesus (of course! 😊)
• Ryana @Life of Heritage
• Savannah @any of her blogs 😆

The Questions

1. Who is the most difficult character you’ve ever written?
2. Are there any songs that have influenced your writing?
3. Is there a theme that you’d like to explore in your writing someday?
4. What’s the hardest thing you’ve ever had to do to one of your characters (short of killing them)?
5. What’s the weirdest thing you’ve had to research for a book?
6. Was there ever a time that you didn’t want to be a writer?
7. Which fictional character has had the most impact in your life?
8. What’s your favorite book-to-movie adaptation?
9. If you could meet one character at a coffee shop (or tea, or whatever’s your jam), who would it be and why?
10. Pick a character from one of your books or WIPs – what’s their favorite flavor of ice cream?
11. How is a raven like a writing desk? (Gonna pull an Alice in Wonderland reference here. 😜)