The Answer! (Plus: Award, and Other Miscellany)

The moment has arrived! I shall now reveal who exactly the kind of person it is in the Through the Keyhole Blogfest entry I posted on Monday.

First off, most of you who guessed said that you thought it was a male widow.

Partly right, although not completely. I wasn't aiming for anything so tragic.

He--and yes, it is a he, you were right on the gender!--is a traveling writer, doing research for his book, going to conventions/meetings, and the computer is what he writes on; the CD-RW has his files burned onto it. The green string is indeed a luggage tag, a remnant of his last trip to the airport. The picture of the couple is an image of him and his wife, but they're not divorced/separated, and there's no sorrowful backstory--he's just traveling abroad, while his wife stays home. They're a happy couple. :) The picture is a reminder . . .

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Now, L'Aussie awarded me the Fair Dinkum Award.

So, I'd like to give L'Aussie a big THANK YOU! and  *hug* for awarding me. :) It is much appreciated!

Me being American, I'd never heard of a Fair Dinkum before--L'Aussie apparently anticipated that, and told the award-ees to guess what they thought a Fair Dinkum was. (Read my comment HERE.) Hopefully, I got it at least somewhat right. :P

I also get to pass it on, too, and here are the people I'm awarding next with the Fair Dinkum Award (trying to be sure that no one's nabbed 'em before me . . . LOL):

Robyn Campbell
Brian
Sangu Mandanna
Madeleine
Dominic de Mattos

. . . and there are many others out there--Blogger seems to be a Fair Dinkum melting pot!

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Have you heard that the US Department of the Interior wants to strip Northern Rocky Mountain wolves of their Endangered Species status?

Now, look: I have absolutely nothing against saying that they're not on the brink of extinction. Hooray for that, actually. But LET'S NOT HUNT THE WOLVES. Please. If they're going to take wolves off the list, DON'T let them be hunted back onto it!

Remember what happened last time the wolves were killed, and there weren't enough of them out there? The ecosystem collapsed. Deer populations, (which are still issues in some parts of the country) went wild, eating, then starving themselves out as they ate everything, killing their food supplies due to lack of control by predators. We NEED the predators!

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You know that site that's been circulating for the past few days, every since Jen posted that awesome interview with Miranda Dickinson? Authonomy.com, set up by Harper Collins? It sound like an awesome site, and a good opportunity for getting your work out there. Publishers, agents, and other people like that will be able to read it, and you get exposure. People get to read your books and comment on them. Publishers have actually published works by the authors there.

Well, apparently you can't use it unless you're over 18.

*sigh* I don't happen to be over 18, which means that option's out the window. What's with the rule, anyway? Doesn't make sense to me.

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You may have noticed that I took down the Other Blogs page I had up, with all you bloggers' buttons. I don't hate your buttons--in fact, many of them are quite nice, and I make those kind of images myself--but the format was acting up giving me tons of white space, and it's easier to just add people to the blogroll on my sidebar. So, if you were on the Other Blogs page, rest assured that you are on the blogroll. :)

(I might set up one of the moving, repeating sequences of buttons, if I can figure out how . . . or I may just put up the page again in the future.)

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It snowed ALL DAY yesterday. Non-stop. There are several inches on the ground right now, and it's supposed to snow more this week--hooray! Not that I get snow days, being homeschooled and all . . . but it's the symbolic aspect. Plus, I love snow.


-----The Golden Eagle

Random (But Still Awesome) Pieces of Life

Hooray for Talli Roland! She was all over the blogosphere yesterday--so many posts had that wonderful pink cover, spreading the word about her release! And The Hating Game got far on that bestseller chart. :D

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Dominic de Mattos at Writes of Passage awarded me the Versatile Blogger Award! I big thank you to Dominic for awarding me! :)

I will award:

Jules at Trying To Get Over the Rainbow

Caroline at A Writer's Life For Me

Stephen Tremp at Breakthrough Blogs

All of them are very Versatile, believe me. :)

(Well? What are you waiting around for? Read the rest of this post and follow them if you don't already!)

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I set up a playlist at the top of my blog, as you have no doubt noticed. It's entirely instrumental; I tend to like Christmas music better when no one's singing. It's all YouTube video, (made at YouTube Reloaded) since that seemed like the easiest playlist to make, and it has the added bonus of the listener also getting to watch, if they want to.

Many of them have lyrics, and if you want something really cool to see, check out the Mannheim Steamroller videos with the Christmas lights (we have a CD of some of his music--my favorite is God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen, which is up there.)

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It snowed yesterday! And last night, so there's snow on the ground right now. It's not a thick coating or anything, there's still a lot of grass poking up, but it's snow! *smile*

I hope you bloggers in the UK don't have any serious snow troubles, though; the recent bad weather made the national news here in the USA.

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You know those brilliant pieces of inspiration that pop up, and then you get that wonderful feeling of know where and when things are going to happen in your story? When things fall into place, after thinking hard and coming up with nothing for the past days . . . weeks . . . months?

I just had a moment of such inspiration, and I'm feeling really excited about my novel. It's a relief, actually, since the story was starting to feel kind of dull. Thank goodness for the mind.


-----The Golden Eagle

The Aftermath

I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving Day!

And now there are leftovers to look forward to--mmmm. Due to there being an awesome sale at the grocery store, we got a 21-pound turkey, even with the knowledge there would only be two people eating it . . . so we've got a whole lot of delicious food. :) (Plus stuffing--I adore that stuff.)

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In writing news, I finished another part of my book! (I write the current novel in parts.) NaNoWriMo has paid off in that I've been thrust up to a turning point in my book and advanced it over 70,000 words. Which is excellent.

Although, I've said I wanted to finish my novel by the end of 2010--that's looking a little questionable, since I just got some more ideas during NaNo, (the Case of the Expanding Novel strikes again) and I only managed to write 5 lines out of 36-line plot plan in all those 70,000 words. Which means I'd have to write another 7 parts at my current pace, and really, I don't think I'll be able to write 400,000 words or so in one month, as much as I'd like to be able to. But I will not be deterred! If anything, I want to get halfway through that plot plan in December; I might have to truncate some things, but I have to make this thing stop sometime . . . this isn't a Never-Ending Story.

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I was thinking about putting up a Christmas playlist--I've been thinking about putting up some music for a while, and naturally that led to the Christmas music idea. But since not everyone celebrates Christmas, I was wondering: would you mind a playlist? Would you enjoy it? Would you hate it? (I promise there wouldn't be anything horribly screechy or annoying or bothersome. Mostly instrumental.)


Again, I hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving day. :)


-----The Golden Eagle

Questions for You, the Reader!

I was thinking about moving the awards and some of the other stuff on the blog to a page next to the "About This Blog" page; what do you think? I think it's getting a little crammed and busy on the sidebars, but do you guys like that? Or do you think there should be more busy-ness?