The Liebster Award

LiebsterAward2

It has been more than two years since I was nominated for the Liebster Award. This time I thank Author Gibson for the nomination, check out his blog and his books here.

Once I have answered the questions, I will nominate 11 new bloggers and ask them 11 questions myself. Should they feel like playing along, they will do the same to other 11 bloggers. The hope is to spread the word and dominate the ‘internet’ world 😉 (super villain laugh included).

Nominee’s Rules:

Thank me, as I nominated you, so you (kind of) own me! and supply a link to my blog for your readers to browse: https://leticiatoraci.wordpress.com/
Copy and paste the Liebster Award badge into your post.
Answer the eleven questions.
Nominate eleven bloggers and inform them of their nomination via social media methods.
List eleven new questions for your nominees to answer.

Once again, there is no obligation to do this. You really should though, as it’s fun and helps spread the word of evil…no wait, it helps spread the word about your blog. Yeah, that’s what I meant!

Have fun with it.

My answers:

1. What do you feel is the best blog post you’ve written to date and why?
One of my favorite blog posts talks about when I started writing. For me the post reads like the page of a diary. It is interesting to see where I stood in 2015 and where I am now; planning not only a novel but also a series of books and having my science fiction and fantasy anthology in its final stages.

2. If you had to choose one of your current projects to tell a group of strangers about, what would it be?
I would talk about my anthology, how I came up with a different world for every short story and what inspired the plot of each of them.
In some stories interesting prompts were the imaginary carrots that made the plot bunnies approach me out of their hiding place; in others a very old piece of writing that had failed at being a good story long ago was made better by a thorough rewrite until its potential could unfold. Their timing was also quite varied, a couple of short stories took more than twenty years to ripen into an good one and others dropped from the sky almost ready.

3. Name an individual that has inspired you?
Most books do inspire me, even the books I didn’t like. So authors, if I read your book, regardless of how many stars I rated it on Goodreads, you have inspired me. Good work!

4. Name a book, you would recommend others read — that you didn’t write?
I would recommend “Brave New World” by Aldous Huxley because it shows what happens if humans give up being adults and allow other people to make all decisions for them. Humans without any responsibilities may achieve a kind of hedonistic happiness, which would be so empty that sadness, struggle and the unending search for meaning in life would, at least in my opinion, be a much better option.
My second recommendation would be to read books written in other countries, by authors of other nationalities. This will open your thoughts to new ways of thinking. It’s like mind traveling LOL.

5. What is your favorite movie or TV show?
One of my favorite movies is Blade Runner. I did write a blog post with the longer list.

TV Shows, two I can remember right now are Frasier and Fringe. I will soon write a blog post with my top ten list.

6. Hypothetical: If you were abandoned on a deserted island, what genre of books would you ask to be left with you.
It would be impossible for me to choose. I like Science Fiction, Fantasy, YA and even Romance. I often tire of reading one genre and go reading something completely different next time.

7. Cat, dog, or other?
Cats, dogs are cute but I consider them too high maintenance for my current life style.

8. How easy is it for you to get into creative mode. Do you need to do something special to arrive at that?
For motivation, I need time and a long quiet day. Since such days are extremely rare, I mostly just push trough and get my butt on the chair.

9. Where do you get ideas?
Ideas appear all the time in my mind, like weeds in an untended garden.

10. Which creative endeavor or project would you like to be most remembered for?

To me it seems that to ‘be remembered’ creative endeavors have to be high quality, an original breakthrough, or be highly recommended by the right influential people 😉

A lot of books I considered terrible while reading were considered something to ‘be remembered’, so this isn’t the quality standard by which I choose my books nowadays. I hope though to achieve good quality and originality in all my creative projects, enough to be remembered.

11. Is there a city or place you never tire of?

Never, really never… Probably not. Life had often a way of throwing me around the globe, and I got used to it.

I was for a long time nomadic like the characters in my books and the theme of ‘not settling and wishing for changes’ surfaces often in my stories.
It gets easier to answer this question if I talk about places I like. For starters, most places where you are surrounded by the people you love are great. I like staying at home but often feel I must go out and see new places, and also eat food I didn’t cook, I often get tired of my own seasoning.
I love beaches with good weather, and my favorite ones are in Croatia. They aren’t always sand beaches but therefore less full of tourists and sellers. The only thing that chases me out of the beach is too much sun, but shadow + water is a pleasant combination for any place to stay, watch the kids play and read. And if there is swimming involved that’s great too.

 

So now, here are my questions:

 

1. What is your favorite season of the year?
2. Which were the three best books you ever read?
3. Where would be your dream vacation?
4. Your favorite book genres?
5. Do you have any reading habits or books you like to reread?
6. If you could retire tomorrow (and live a comfortable life with no time pressure), what would you do?
7. Do you have any hobbies?
8. Which book(s) you think every person should read?
9. Do you buddy-read books?
10. Do you participate in Readathons or like to set up TBR lists?
11. Do you have any current artistic/writing/life projects/goals?

I nominate:

1 – The Upstream Writer

2 –  Brandy Potter Books

3 – Bionic Book Worm

4 – Way Too Fantasy

5 – Richie Billing

6 – Amaysn Reads

7 – Author Raimey Gallant

8 – Blackwings666

9 – Saturday Nite Reader

10 – Red Headed Book Lover

11 – Jon Pill

and any of you who has a blog  and would be interested in answering these questions!

Post a comment down with a link to your blog so I may check it out!

 

 

 

LIEBSTER AWARD NOMINATION

liebster-award

Thank you to Mike Wolff  (blog) for the nomination.  It’s always fun to answer other author’s questions and see other people answers to your questions later on.

Once I have answered the questions posed to me, I will nominate 10 new bloggers and provide them with a new set of questions.  Should they feel like playing along, they will do the same to another set of 10 bloggers.  The hope is to spread the word and dominate the internet…or something like that.

Nominee’s Rules:

Thank me, as I nominated you (you own me!!!) 🙂 and supply a link to my blog for your readers to browse. https://leticiatoraci.wordpress.com/
Copy and paste the Liebster Award badge into your post.
Answer the ten questions.
Nominate ten bloggers and inform them of their nomination via social media methods.
List ten new questions for your nominees to answer.

Once again, there is no obligation to do this.  You really should though, as it’s fun and helps spread the word of evil…no wait, it helps spread the word about your blog.  Yeah, that’s what I meant!

Have fun with it.

My answers:

1. Are space aliens real? Give a compelling argument to support your answer.

I think they are real. My compelling argument: Because they visit me sometimes. Lol, just joking, but the universe is big enough and has planets enough to sustain life, so why not?

 

2. What is your favorite genre to read and why?

I like sci-fi and fantasy equally so the two genres are tied.

 

3.If you’re not a vegetarian, what would you put on your burger?  If you are a vegetarian, what would you eat instead of a burger?  If you don’t like burgers, why not?

I’m not so crazy for burgers and I’ll explain why. Some years ago there was a meat scandal in Europe where they found old horses meat mixed in minced meat products, so this made me mistrust the origin and quality of minced meat food. That includes also chicken nuggets, bolognese sauces and ready made lasagna. I would put a steak in the place of the burger because at least then I know what I’m eating. I would become vegetarian if I could, but the last time I tried I had no energy, so I put the idea aside for the moment while I still have a really busy life.

 

4. Finish this sentence with a short paragraph.  A little green alien, a panda bear and the Grim Reaper walk into a bar…

… The Grim Reaper asks for Archers with lemonade for his alien friend, some bamboo shoots for his pet, and tells everybody to relax. The panda bear though eats, shoots and leaves. 🙂 And the Grim Reaper says: “Oh no! Now I have to work only because you misplaced the comma!”.

 

5. What is your greatest professional accomplishment?

I haven’t been totally there yet. I hope it will be when I manage to publish my series. An art exposition with a newspaper article was close to it though.

 

6. As a writer/reader/artist/creative-type person, what, if any, music do you listen to while you create?

Songs I like. I made a blog post with a list of some of them:

https://leticiatoraci.wordpress.com/2015/11/10/my-writing-playlist-25-songs-full-of-emotion/

 

7. What is your worst fear?  I’m talking clowns, spiders, rats, falling, etc…  Why?

My second worst fear is roller coasters. Anything to do with too much velocity. I won’t reveal the worst though because it’s a secret. 🙂

 

8. If you could either be a highly successful author/artist with no ability to interact with your fans, or a slight to moderately successful author/artist with fan interaction, what would you chose and why?

I would prefer to be able to interact with people always.

 

9. I like myths and urban legends, you should all already know that.  So, what is your favorite myth or urban legend and why?

There are many native Brazilian myths I like. One of my favorite is called “the origin of the stars”. They say that once kids tied a rope in the sky and climbed up, never to be seen again, and they became the stars.

 

10. What message about you and your creations would you like new followers to know? Get on that soapbox, this is your stage!

This is a difficult one. 🙂 I think it would be that I always try to do my best in any creation, be it a painting or a story. I can’t be sure people will like it, but I’ll be sure I did my best at the time when I was exposing or publishing them.

Now for my nominees:

I thought a bit about it and, since a lot of the bloggers I know have already been nominated, I would like to invite anyone who feels like playing too. If you answered my questions in your blog please leave a comment on this post with a link to your blog. I’ll be happy to read your answers. Cheers! 🙂

1. What’s your perfect pizza?

2.What did you do for your latest birthday?

3. Which was the best book you read last year?

4. You favorite character in a book?

5. How many books do you read per year?

6. If you could retire tomorrow what would you do?

7. Your dream vacation? Worst vacation? Best vacation?

8. Crowds, small groups, only a partner or “Go away, I’m a loner”?

9. If a friend in love with you kidnapped you, and you woke up in a ship going to a planet destined to be a new Earth colony what would you do? Assuming you could not kill your friend because without him/her you could not control the spaceship?

10. Do you have writing or other artistic/hobby projects? How are they going?

Sibling of the World Award

A very special thank you to Mike Wolff for the nomination.

 

Here are my answers:

Orange or Green…Why?
Being a painter I think that all colors have the right moment to appear, so they all have their specific role. So I would not have a favorite.

Paper or Plastic…Why?
Paper. Because it will never get totally out of fashion even with e-readers. Plastic is more of an environmental problem we have to deal with.

Fantasy, Science Fiction or Horror…Why?
I alternate reading science fiction and fantasy. To read only one of the two genres would be boring for me in the long term. I usually don’t read horror itself, but love Gothic novels.

If you had to describe your writing style as an animal, what would it be?
Funny question, lol. I think it would be an eagle, flying high in time and character motivations, and then fixing a certain moment and approaching it, diving into its details, emotions, and action. This brings in the necessity to write the time and point of view transitions with great care.

If you could chose a super power to have, what would it be and why?
I would like to be extremely fast, only this way I would manage to do everything I plan to do. If I could choose a second power I would choose to be very strong. My supernatural characters have both powers so they aren’t bound by these human limitations, but their powers are contained by their short duration. They aren’t over powerful all the time like super heroes. It’s anyway fun to play with limitations both in a story and in real life.

 

Who is your favorite literary character and why?
It’s difficult to pick a favorite, but I would say that Emilia the rag doll, from the Brazilian children’s book: Sitio do Pica-pau Amarelo (The Yellow Woodpecker Grange) is one of my favorites because she is witty, not aware of her flaws, but pure of heart as most children. She is also never afraid to question everything and look for her own way of doing things. I once wrote a blog post about that (https://leticiatoraci.wordpress.com/2015/03/)

 

What is you favorite sandwich?
If would pick a sandwich I would choose one with roast beef. Something from a good place, I don’t like stuff from fast food chains anymore. I also usually eat bread only for breakfast too. An ideal lunch for me is a good salad with grilled aubergine.

 

A fairy, a robot and a zombie walk into a bar…what happens next?
They ask to see Gandalf and ask him to open a temporal dimensional portals to their respective worlds. Or they all go to the Lord of the Rings world together. There the fairy goes to live among the elves and falls in love with Legolas. The zombie goes to search for the one ring instead of brains, and the robot goes to help the humans on their house shores, or he gives up on technology altogether and goes to live among the Ents.

 

How many books to you read a year…roughly?
I never counted it before entering Goodreads. 🙂 I read a lot in my childhood, among them all Emilia books, one of my favorite books then was The wizard of Oz. In my teens I read every Anne Rice book every story based on the Star Trek universe and every Asimov book I could find, not talking of repeatedly reading The Hunchback of Notre Dame, I love its Gothic universe with unrequited love. In this new century I spent some years reading few books while I was playing computer games. This year I read 39 so far, but with two small kids you can only read so much.

 

Social Media: a great tool for the Indie Artist or a hinderance to creation?
Mostly a great tool to get to know interesting people who are passionate for the same things you are, even if none of them lives in your town or even country. It all depends on how disciplined you are with your time. Sometimes it leads to procrastination, but in my case social media isn’t really the problem, but more all the possibilities of learning you find in the internet. It is an almost infinite source of great information and I never get enough of it. But everything you learn is never wasted so that’s OK in the long term.

 

The official rules of this award are:

Thank the blogger who nominated you and link to their blog in your post
Answer the questions that the blogger who nominated you has provided.
Nominate ten other bloggers (or up to 10).
Create ten questions for your nominees and notify them of their nominations.

My Nominations:

Debbie Manber Kupfer

Lorna George

Pete Sutton

Carol Van Natta

J.M.Turner

Kristy Carey

R. K. Summers

S.A. Gibson

Jen Ponce

M.A. Ray

And anyone who would like to play is also invited!
My Questions:

1.What have you been up to in your writing life?

2. Which theme has surfaced in your story? Has it surfaced naturally or you wanted to talk about it since the beginning of your project?

3. How do you find time to write?

4. Did you always wanted to write a book since your childhood or was this an idea that you had later in life?

5. With what did you have difficulty with in your first draft? How did you overcome it?

6. Do you have other ways to express yourself artistically or is writing your sole passion?

7. In which social media are you more active?

8. Do you sometimes need a break from social media and/or writing?

9. What are your favorite authors?

10. Which books influenced your writing?