LIEBSTER AWARD NOMINATION

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?