An Award

Gotcha! It's a blogger award - The Versatile Blogger Award bestowed upon me by Marilyn from Things I Want to Tell My Mother. She writes letters to her (deceased) mother, just like I do. I was surprised to get the award since I've only recently met her/her blog and vice-a-versa. But I'm honored just the same.

As part of winning this award I'm to tell you seven things about myself that are not included in my blog. I've done this before, however, I'm taking Marilyn's lead and writing something similar that she did as I found her seven things to be very interesting since I didn't know much about her.

So here goes:

1) I grew up in Florissant, Missouri. I'm not sure if I'll have the facts correct, but back in the day this town was divided between the French and German. I asked one of my aunts why all the kids in the family went to Sacred Heart School (when she was telling me how they walked to school nearly every day) since St. Ferdinand School was closer. She said that St. Ferdinand was for French people and Sacred Heart was for German people. I was puzzled because they both were Catholic schools. I too went to Sacred Heart from 1st through 8th grade. I think by then the whole French and German thing didn't exist, however, when I was growing up there was a distinction between Catholic and "public" - if you didn't go to Catholic school, I didn't think you were Catholic. You were Public. DUR.

2) I stayed in the Florissant area until I married, then moved to Akron, Ohio and lived there for a year. We then moved to Corpus Christi, Texas and I was there for a year. When my marriage didn't work out, I came back to Missouri to live - not far from where I grew up. I'm now living in Manchester, Missouri (south of Florissant). Both Florissant and Manchester are suburbs of the big city, St. Louis. There are a lot of suburbs of St. Louis.

3) Like Marilyn, because of my blog, I have met a lot of wonderful people from all over the world. That is amazing.

4) I don't have as varied writing accomplishments as Marilyn, but I'll continue to work on the craft of writing. Most recently I've been accepted in two anthologies: Storm Country (and all proceeds go to the Joplin School District libraries due to the tornado that devastated Joplin - only $10 and you can still order them! My story is about my friend Geoffrey) and St. Louis Reflections (celebrating St. Louis Writers Guild's 100th Anniversary - my story is about Hendel's - a little market that used to be in Florissant - actually the original building is still there, but now it's a restaurant. You can purchase this book at StLBooks.com for $9.99. Okay didn't mean to turn this into a promo thingy.

5) I had to laugh at Marilyn's - "I have a short attention span..." Well, I too have a short attention span, but I always want to write in epistolary form. My goal for 2012 is to write a hand-written letter to someone once a week (or more). And did I mention that I put together three family newsletters (one for my mom's side of the family, one for my dad's side of the family and one for my husband's family). I do them quarterly but without information from the family, I've had to drop one to bi-annually and it's going to happen to another one soon!

6) I belong to the St. Louis Writers Guild and the Saturday Writers group, both of which are chapters of the Missouri Writers' Guild. (MWG is having their annual writing conference this April which I plan to attend.) I also belong to a wonderful critique group that one gal named the five of us: WWWP (Wild Women Wielding Pens).

7) Marilyn talked about her other "favorite" name. I have two other names that I'm called and I'm not so sure that either are my favorite! Ha. But my adult children - when they were younger - used to introduce me to their friends as Lynnard. They call me that now and then. My hubby calls me Lester. I have no idea where that came from, but it probably beats what I call him! He he he. Oh what do I call him? Willis. Really, that's his middle name. But Lester is not my middle name. Honest. It's Marie. And my nephew Josh named me LLL (Little Looney Lynn). Hmmm, wonder why that is? It might have something to do with the fact that I sang in the car for nearly eight hours when on a road trip. I made up words. I sang off key. Josh was in the back seat. Probably ruined him for life.

Okay, there it is. I'm now supposed to present this award to other great blogs. How can you do that? To me they're all great blogs, so I'll award four (like Marilyn did) and hopefully there's someone new out there reading this who will wonder who those WWWPs are... and since there are four besides me, here they are in alphabetical order by the name of their blog:

I Digress
Message in a Bloggle: The Art of Being Broken
Sioux's Page
Write from the Heart