Super Sweet Blogging Award!

My Dudes, the Gorgeously-Maned and Überly-Talented L.G. Keltner of Writing Off the Edge gifted me with the Super Sweet Blogging Award at the start of November, and it's only now that I've been able to catch up to doing my duty by it. Part of the reason for the delay was my lack of functioning Interwebs at home (until now—I gots me some FiOS, folks!). Another excuse reason is that I was focused on my Resurrection Blogfest stuffs. And finally, I'm just lazy as sin, so there you are.

Anyway, here's what this involves: I have to answer a few basic questions, all about sweets, then pass it on to other deserving bloggers.  Allons-y...

Cookies or Cake?

Red Velvet Cake.

Chocolate or Vanilla?

Chocolate, of course.

What is your favorite sweet treat?

Häagen-Dazs Rocky Road Ice Cream.

When do you crave sweet things most?

Haha...always. Evenings, really. The average individual may desire a nightcap. Pour me a shot of brownie, instead. (OK, or Baileys and/or Godiva chocolate liqueur.)

If you had a sweet nickname what would it be?

Uh...Death by Chocolate? (My recipe for it is killer.) (Not literally.) (Just sayin'.)

And now, to tag some folks:

Juli @ Surviving Boys

Tracy @ Pull Up a Toadstool

Tonja @ Tonja's Musings

JoJo @ Tahoma Beadworks & Photography

Elise Fallson

All right, damn it; now I've gotta have me some Oreo Coconut Fudge Cream cookies.

U Got The Look! Meme

L.G. Keltner of Writing Off the Edge tagged me with the "U Got The Look!" meme. It doesn't have a pic associated with it, but I found this one and it just felt "right," you know? ;-)

Anyway—here's whatcha gots to do: go to your current WIP, find the word "look," and post the section which includes it, as well as the surrounding paragraphs. Then tag 5 other poor bastards with the meme.

So I give you an excerpt from my as-yet-unpublished Greek mythological romance, That Fatal Kiss. It's from a section at the very beginning, in which Hades, Lord of the Underworld coerces asks Zeus, King of the Gods, to help him snatch up the lovely immortal goddess, Persephone.

*       *       *

Hades sat back in his throne.  "Will you aid me in this endeavor?" 

Cagily playing for time, Zeus asked, "Why her?  Why the daughter of Demeter?" 

"Why not?” Hades snapped back.  “Look about you, Zeus; do you not see the darkness that pervades my kingdom?  Do you think it a pleasure to rule these fluttering shades, which have barely more substance than the air the mortals breathe above?"  Hades turned his face from the Olympian’s suddenly penetrating stare as he added, "Try mating with them." 

At that, Zeus' laugh shook through the glistening walls of the throne room once again. "Forgive me, Hades, I was not thinking of that."

Hades' face darkened with contempt.  "For an unprecedented change."

The Thunderer bristled at the continued insolence.  “Is that all you want her for, then? For the purpose of assuaging your lust?  Is a daughter of mine to serve merely as your receptacle, is she to be nothing more than your concubine?” he cried indignantly.

“I do not want her for my concubine, but for my lawful wife!”

“Your wife!”

“Yes, confound you, my wife!”

"But why her?"

“Are you blind, too, that you have to ask?"

Under different circumstances, and with another god, Zeus might have chuckled with appreciation.  But he could not afford to laugh now, the situation as volatile as it was. 

“Of course you want Persephone.”  He thought for a moment before asking, “But what if she does not want you?”

Hades’ lips twisted and he turned away from Zeus.  “Since when did a female’s wishes ever matter?  You know the customs.  If you, as her father, give her to me, then she is lawfully mine.”

“But why do you not court her properly, ask her if she would be your queen?”

The sullen god’s eyes flickered back to the Cloud Gatherer.  “Court her?  The way you courted your bride?  Did you prostrate yourself before Hera, begging her to have you?  No; you wanted her, Cronus was in no position to challenge you, and so you took her.”

“I had Rhea’s consent.”

“And I would have yours.  What is your point?”

"My point is that Demeter will not be pleased to lose her only child to the Lord of the Dead," said Zeus, getting to the true crux of the matter, as he saw it.  That ought to put a stop to things before they progressed any further.

Hades shrugged.  "She is herself a goddess of the Earth, a prolific creator.  Surely she can have another."

*       *       *

And I hereby tag:

Georgina Morales at the newly revamped Epitaphs and Headstones

Chris Fries at A Writer's Expanding and Slightly-Warped Universe

Damon Peter Rallis at The Six-Fingered Monkey

Elizabeth Twist, Writer, Plague Enthusiast

Steampunk Princess

Rock and roll it, kids.

Sisterhood of the World Bloggers Award!

Some weeks ago, L.G. Keltner of Writing Off the Edge gave me the Sisterhood of the World Bloggers Award and I'm only now getting around to fulfilling the grueling responsibilities of this honor. ;-) J/K, L.G. - thanks for thinking of me! This gal's a creative and dedicated writer of groovy sci-fi, so y'all should really go check out her stuff.

To accept this bad boy, I must share 7 things about myself and pass it along to 7 lucky blogs. Now, I do feel a bit like my well of creative self-knowledge is running dry, but I'll try not to put y'all to sleep.

1. I don't dig it when strangers or people I don't know well lay their mitts on me.
2. My last hair cut was on Friday, December 31, 2010. (This is unrelated to #1, above.)
3. I've never really "dated," per se. Every guy I've been seriously involved with was someone known to me and, frankly, the very idea of going out on a date with a stranger and having to make small-getting-to-know-you-talk wigs me out. (This is somewhat related to #1, above.)
4. I regret having filled my son's head with ideas of Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy when he was little.
5. Sometimes, I wish I had a little girl to raise. But, like gas, menstrual cramps, or a headache, that urge soon passes.
6. I don't feel comfortable showing my face to the world without curling my eyelashes and putting on mascara. (What the world thinks of me, with or without, is probably best left unknown.)
7. If my body metabolized alcohol better (meaning, if boozing it up didn't cause me to gain weight so quickly), I suspect I'd be a raging alcoholic. :-)

Here are the 7 blogs:

Holly's Horrorland

Many Steps Sideways

Speak Coffee To Me

Crazy California Claire

The Aussie Zombie

Surviving Boys

Laura & the Voices

Right, so that's my work done. Have at it, Ladies! :-)

WIBWIW ~ Who Am I? Who are you?

The WIBWIW of this post's title comes from this new feature I'm introducing to mah little bloggy-blog: Whatever, I'll Blog What I Want! Can you dig it? I knew that you could.

In today's post I'm borrowing an idea from my fellow blogger and all around nice gal, L.G. Keltner of Writing Off the Edge. Back in May she asked her readers to do something I found quite titillating - namely, she asked us to describe ourselves in one sentence, with no limits as to how many words we could use.

Intriguing concept, right? How often are we asked to encapsulate all our thoughts, our aspirations, our strengths and weaknesses, in short, everything which makes us unique individuals, in just one sentence? Unless you're coming up with a profile for an online dating site or crafting a tagline for yourself for some arcane purpose, my guess is "never."

L.G. got the ball rolling for us by writing of herself, "I am a geeky writer, wife, and mother who doesn't have her head in the clouds because it's out there amongst the stars." Which is a brilliant self-descriptor, though she fails to mention she sports a glorious mane of titian locks that I'd kill to possess. (Don't worry, L.G., I'm not gonna scalp ya. For one thing, I don't know where you live. For another, as I've said elsewhere, I'm lazy as hell.)

My answer to this challenge, which I posted in her comments section, was "I'm a sleep-deprived lunatic, self-medicating through her mid-life crises with chocolate and cabernet sauvignon, while freaking out over how she's going to pay for her son's college fees starting next month (next week!!!)."

This clearly shows what I was going through then, and still am: money and life worries that I cope with by treating myself like shit. Lovely. Well, in the back burner of my frazzled mind is the thought that I have to take better care of myself because no one's going to do it for me, so, you know - baby steps to a better me. I'll either get there or I'll leave a chunky corpse that's three shrouds to the wind.

On a better day, I'd describe myself as follows: "I'm a compassionate, sensual, and creative soul whose work will bring pleasure to many." That's better, right? More optimistic, anyway.

So, how about it? In the comments below, describe yourself in one sentence, however long.

Go on, then - I dare ya.