44 Odd Things You Don’t Know About Me:

 

I saw this intriguing quiz on  author  Jen Ponce’s website ( Go check out her books! Visit her Amazon page by clicking here ), so I considered myself nominated to answer it. 🙂

 

1.Do you like blue cheese?

No. Mozzarella, though, is a great invention.

2.Last concert?

It was ages ago, Travis, one of my favorite groups.


3.Do you own a gun?

No.

4.What is your favorite flavor of ice cream?

It changes, a lot. Sometimes raspberry, sometimes chocolate or even just cream. But the best place to have ice cream is still Italy.

5.Do you get nervous before Doctor visits?

No, but I would prefer never to go the doctor.

 

6.What do you think of hot dogs?

I like the ones they sell at Ikea. There you can put as many pickles, onions, and sauce as you wish.

 

7.Favorite movie?

I have a list I’ll post it in a future blog post. But one of my favorites is a comedy called Tampopo.

 

8.What do you prefer to drink in the morning?

Black tea with milk and sugar.

9.Do you do push-ups?

Never. But I miss going to the fitness academy.

 

10. What’s your favorite piece of Jewelry?

A necklace with two pendants,both in the shape of a small boy. My mother gave me each pendant when my sons were born.

 

11. Favorite hobby?

My hobbies always have the habit of becoming much more than a hobby so let’s say reading, I don’t take that yet so seriously it has overstepped those boundaries.

 

12.Do you have A.D.D.?

No. But I’m an easily distracted, right-brained kind of person.

 

13.What’s the one thing you dislike about yourself?

Being over sensitive. I wish I would always be good modded, but then I’m too sensitive for that.

 

14.What is your pet’s name?

At the moment I have no pets. I had a cat called Susi some years ago. I would like to have another cat, but it’s difficult when you don’t have a place to leave them when you go on vacation.

 

15.Name three thoughts at this moment.

1. It’s late and I should get some sleep.

2. I never learn and always sleep too late.

3. Tomorrow I’ll surely do the same thing again.

 

16.Name 4 drinks you drink on regularly?

Water, I love drinking water. Black tea with milk (4 cups in the morning to get on with my day). Can’t remember any other I drink regularly.

 

17. Current worries?

I usually keep most of my worries to myself. But sometimes I wonder about where our world is going to.

 

18.Current annoyance right now?

Too many compromises, too little energy. It happens with most mothers, I think.

 

19.Favorite place to be?

Home.

 

20.How do you bring in the New Year?

At home with family, sometimes we go to see the fireworks. Nothing too fancy.

 

21.Where would you like to go?

Sri Lanka, The Maldive Islands, Greece, a cruise through the east of the Mediterranean, and many other exotic places. Or also not so exotic. I love traveling.

 

22. Favorite TV show?

I’m always watching some DVD with historical,sci-fi or fantasy series. I almost never watch regular TV.

23.Do you own slippers?

Yeah, but right now I’m using Havaianas like any good Brazilian.

 

24.What color shirt are you wearing right now?

A white one with cats, stars, and moons, part of a pajama I like.

 

25.Do you like sleeping on satin sheets?

No. I’m not the heroine of a romance novel. 🙂

 

26.Can you whistle?

Yeah.

 

27.What is your favorite color?

Red.

 

28.Would you be a pirate?

Only in the imagination of my sons.

 

29.What songs do you sing in the shower?

I usually never sing, but come up with plot twists.

 

30.Favorite girl’s name?

Sarah, Tatiana, Hannah, Bianca, my female character’s names, my own name. 🙂

 

31.Favorite boy’s name? Rafael, Liam, Simon, My male character’s names, both my son’s names.

 

32.What’s in your pocket right now?

I usually carry a bag with tons of things, therefore no use for pockets.

 

33.Last thing/person that made you laugh?

Both my kids are always doing funny things.

 

34.Best toy as a child?

Small dolls called Fofoletes. They illustrate this post.

 

35.Worst pain you ever had?

I prefer not to talk about the worse ones. But when it comes to mild pain, if you are a woman you get used to getting up and work despite it.

 

36.Where would you love to live?

A magical land where all my far away friends are nearby.

 

37.How many TV’s do you have?

One, but I often watch DVDs on my computer.

 

38.Who is your loudest friend?

My hubby. He’s my beloved parrot. (Hey! Perhaps I’m a pirate after all).

 

39.How many dogs do you have?

None. I’m more of a cat person.

 

40.Does someone trust you?

I hope so, lol. I think most people nowadays have trust issues, so more or less at the time they start trusting a newcomer like me after a couple of years, it’s already time for me to move to another place. And the difficult process of making new friendships with your real life neighbours starts all over again.

 

41.What book are you reading at the moment?

I’m waiting for a new book of Ilona Andrews to arrive from England. But I usually read about ten at the same time.

 

42.What’s your favorite candy?

Caramels made with salty butter from France. To.Die.For.

 

43.What’s your favorite team?

At the moment the reconnaissance team from Stargate Atlantis.

 

44. Favorite month?

Summer: August in Europe. December, January and February in South America.

 

My 10 favorite blogs on writing

 

Here they are, not in sequence, since I like all of them. When I’m looking for writing advice here is where I look. Many of these bloggers have awesome books on writing I surely recommend.

 

1. Helping Writers Become Authors
https://www.helpingwritersbecomeauthors.com/

 

2. Live Write Thrive
http://www.livewritethrive.com/

 

3. Writers Write
http://writerswrite.co.za/

 

4. Rayne Hall, Making Good Books Great
http://www.raynehall.com/

 

5. Marcy Kennedy
http://marcykennedy.com/

 

6. Jane Friedman
https://janefriedman.com/blog/

 

7.Writers Helping Writers
http://writershelpingwriters.net/

 

8. What is a plot?
http://www.whatisaplot.com/

 

9. Jami Gold
http://jamigold.com/blog/

 

10. She’s Novel
http://www.shesnovel.com/

Is the first book the hardest to write?

 

I could be mistaken, but I consider my current work-in-progress, my first book, the hardest. So by association, I would say the first book is the hardest for most authors, especially if you are strict on yourself and want to make as little beginner mistakes as possible. If you are in love with your story and must make it the best. Once I heard from a famous writer that you probably should start off with a smaller, not so important project and move on later to the stories you are dying to write. I didn’t follow that advice and neither could I, because I usually am passionate about most of my stories, but I still consider that advice wise, even if it’s meant for less impulsive people than me.

On your first book, you have a humongous learning curve. There are so many ways you can improve your writing that I couldn’t make a list of all of them, let alone which one I would consider more important. I could make a list of the books I already looked in topics like Structure, Characters, Viewpoint, Description, and Setting, but apart from books, there are tons of resources on the internet, amazing blogs on writing, videos, podcasts, online courses and so on.

Books are my favorite source of information though because on the internet you often jump from an interesting blog post on writing to facebook and then all your concentration gets lost. And a book will cover a subject in many more pages, in a longer way than any blog post can. And in a book I can underline the most important tips and read them again, I find that easier than jumping back on a video. Again, each one has their own way to learn. For me the less distraction on the side the better.

Together with learning the craft you have to find your own writing system. Once you establish what works for you writing tends to get easier. I wrote my first draft as fast as I could and then I had to establish a certain order to my rewriting process and this proved to be quite time-consuming. There were too many aspects to revise and it looked the first time as too much to juggle. Later I saw I should make a reread for each of the aspects I wanted to improve. It seems like a simple idea, but it took out the overwhelming side of revising out of the way. Now I just need undisturbed revising time to use all the insights I gained so far.

So, was your first book the most difficult? What lessons have you learned with it?