The Leibster Blog Award Questions

Thank you very much to Alison Morton for nominating my blog for a Liebster Blog Award, and for the lovely things she said about my blog. I always read Alison's posts and she recently appeared on my blog talking about her novel, Inceptio:

The rules:

• Thank Liebster Blog Award nominator on your blog and link back to the blogger who presented this award to you;
• Answer the eleven questions from the nominator;
• List eleven random facts about yourself;
• Present the Liebster Blog Award to up to eleven blogs and let them know they’ve been chosen;
• Pass on the eleven questions to your nominees, or create new ones;
• Copy and paste the blog award on your blog.

Here are my answers to the questions forwarded by Alison:

1. What’s your favourite novel and what do you love about it?

This is always a difficult question to answer as I could name many favourites and authors who inspire me to write, but the first novel which sprang to mind was ‘A Room with a View’. I haven’t read this novel for a while (note to self to read again), but I remember enjoying it because it transported me to Italy during a different time, it’s beautifully written and a lovely story. Both of my novels are inspired by this one. And it’s one of the few novels I can name where ‘the film is as good as the book’.

2. Do you have any pet peeves in fiction?

Head-hopping.

3. What are you most proud of?

Being a mother.

4. Your most and least favourite people in history?

Most: Churchill

Least: Hitler

5. The country, city or other place you’d most like to visit?

Australia

6. Which five people would you like to meet (dead, alive, or fictional)?

I thought for a minute about famous people, but I’ve been looking at family trees on Ancestry.uk recently as research for Book 2, The Painting; and I’d really like to meet all of my great-grandparents, but I’ll settle for the parents of my grandfathers (which makes four). And this is cheating a bit-I’d love my mother to come back and meet my children.

7. What makes you laugh the most?

The last time I laughed so much, I had tears running down my face was when I watched National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation at Christmas. Also Friday Night Dinner can be very funny.

8. If you could know the future, what would you wish for?

Happiness and good health for all family and friends.

9. If you won the lottery and could donate money to charity, which charity would you choose – and why?

Some charities unfortunately don't get as much attention as others and I'd have to go for more than one:

NSPCC
Barnados
Mind
Shelter

10. Do you suffer from any little phobias or superstitions?

No.

11 What’s your favourite guilty pleasure?

TOWIE, Made in Chelsea, Celebrity Big Brother: all for research of course...I find human behaviour interesting.

Eleven random facts about me…

1. I do yoga at least once a week.
2. I speak French and Italian.
3. I like handbags.
4. I’ve worked as an au pair in Siena, Italy.
5. I’m quite tall: 5’9”.
6. I’m long-sighted and wore glasses from the age of four. Now I wear lenses for most of the time.
7. I used to work in Investment Banking.
8. I used to play the flute from age 10-18. It’s in the loft somewhere.
9. I can usually tell when I’m not being told the truth.
10. When given a problem to deal with, I can’t relax until it’s resolved.
11. I’ve lived all over the U.K: Birmingham, Manchester, Derbyshire, North Yorkshire, Cambridgeshire, Cambridge, London and now Surrey.

I hope you didn’t doze off….

So my nominees are for five blogs I enjoy. These are also lovely people who I chat to on Twitter:

Louise Walters
Emily Harvale
The New Romantics 4
Helen MacKinven
Stacey Mitchell

Thanks again to Alison and no worries to those I've nominated if you don't have time/ don't fancy it. I hope to get back to blogging more regularly soon-my computer broke and I've got a new one, which I'm setting up today.