My First Blogger Award!

Okay, so I normally only blog once a week, but I had to celebrate my first blogger award! Donna Weaver at Weaving a Tale or Two passed along the following:

Wahoo!!!

Reciept of this award requires that I:
1. Link back to the lovely person who gave me the award (check)

2. Tell you 7 things about myself

3. Pass the award on to 15 recently discovered bloggers ("recently" is not defined, and has been interpreted very loosely)

Okay, so 7 things about me:

1. I majored in Theatre Arts at BYU. I wanted to do the acting track, but it turned out that I can't do a monologue to save my life, so instead I did an emphasis in directing. My minor was English, with an emphasis in creative writing. I had tons of fun, but when I graduated from college, I never really planned to use my degree....
2. I served an LDS mission in Texas, San Antonio before graduating. I met my husband there (don't judge me) and we were engaged less than a month after his own missionary homecoming.
3. After my undergrad I took my 4-month-old baby and went to law school (hubby helped).  While I was there, I served as the Managing Editor of the BYU Journal of Public Law. The JPL published my case note on the Juvenile Death Penalty, in which I correctly predicted that the U.S. Supreme Court would soon outlaw the practice. (Go me!) By the time I got my Juris Doctorate (and doesn't that sound prestigious?), I had a 3-year-old boy and an 8-month-old boy. 9 months after I was sworn in to the bar, I had another. All boys.
4. In late 2006, my sister-in-law, Paula Morgan Weeks (who also took the photos on this site) mentioned that her first cousin Stephenie (get it? Paul-a and Stephen-ie?) had written a couple vampire books which were getting some pretty stellar reviews. Humoring Paula, I looked them up online... and the premise sounded pretty dang cool. I checked the first one out of the library and have never been so hooked so fast. I immediately obtained the second one and read them both twice. With so many good books in the world, that never happens. I'll never write anything as awesome as that series, but it started me thinking... "I can do (something like) that!" No, I have never met this author ... but Paula once used her super cousin powers to get her to personalize her adult sci-fi book for me at a huge signing in Colorado. Yes, I do dream that, someday, she'll acknowledge me as family....
5. I can organize information like nobody's business. I love Excel spreadsheets and almost nothing makes me happier than whipping up a new one with complex calculations and conditional formatting. (This is strange, because I've never really liked math. I passed the AP Math test (barely) in high school and never took another math class.)
6. My father was born and raised in England and my mother was an Army brat. I like to think that, though I was raised in a rather sheltered community in Sandy, Utah, I reaped the benefits of having two well-traveled and open-minded parents.
7. My current (um, first) WIP combines theatre, creative writing (duh), San Antonio, law, juveniles, fantasy, and a bit of my English heritage. If I can just fit a spreadsheet in there somewhere, it will be perfect.

Okay, so now I'm supposed to give the award to 15 bloggers I've recently discovered. Here goes (alphabetical order):

1. Bloggin' Bout' Books (Susan Kennedy Jensen)
2. Bree Despain
3. Brodi Ashton
4. Danyelle Leafty
5. Donna Weaver (that's legal, right?)
6. Emily Wing Smith
7. Gail Carriger (why not?)
8. Jenn Johansson
9. Karen Hoover
10. Ken Cassell
11. Meredith Mansfield
12. Sara Bolton
13. Shanna Blythe
14. Shea Forrest
15. Valynne E. Maetani

Okay, so now I have to get back to preparing the outline for tomorrow's Author's Advisory Conference Call with Robyn Carr--everyone make sure you show up with great questions to ask about Developing Strong Characters! I'll have plenty, but this is your chance to talk to one of the greatest women's fiction authors alive today. She's also my personal mentor. (She said I could call her that.)