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Awards Videos

Very Inspiring Blogger Award #gratitude

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My buddy, the motivator of my journey into movie reviews, The Armchair Squid has nominated me for the Very Inspiring Blogger Award and I am almost speechless. It took me a few days to wrap my head around this and now I’m sharing it with the world. Thank you so much Squid for nominating me and providing me with a level of encouragement I didn’t realize I needed. You have made my week! 😀

Here are three things that have inspired me recently:
1)
Lemons. To me lemons have always symbolized opportunity, ever since I understood the phrase “make lemonade”. I’ve been dealt plenty of lemons recently, but have chosen to make lemonade at every turn. I just hope I don’t end up upsetting my tummy.

2) This driving dog inspires me for three reasons.

1. This is just so cute 8D.
2. Dogs are so willing to do things above and beyond, maybe even unnatural, to please the people they care about. I want to be more like dogs in that they can be so selfless.
3. If a dog can learn to drive a car, surely I can figure out a way to write a story that reaches into people’s hearts and makes them feel good. That’s all I really want, but it may be a bit much.

3) My sister who is also one of my nominees. Tori J. Jones inspires me in more ways than I have time or space to write here, and on top of all that, she’s the physical inspiration for the main female character in my book Eternal Curse: Giovanni’s Angel. Tori is a full-time mom, a full-time art student, a full-time cyber entrepreneur, daily –weekly blogger, and she volunteers her time at Church, the PTA, and women’s shelters. Maybe I should just write a story about her; it’s bound to me a phenomenal read.

My nominations:
I am well aware that these awards aren’t for everyone and also realize that some of the people I’d like to nominate may have already been nominated. In any case, I’m taking lemons and using them as an opportunity to honor and or promote a few bloggers who inspire me daily and weekly. Even if they wish not to participate, I’m proud to give them a shout out and say, “Thanks for inspiring me.”

M.C.V. Egan – an amazing promoter and advocate for peace; an all-around fun person
Stacy Rourke – wonderful sense of humor, wonderful promoter and author
Wiz Green – wonderful sense of humor and great promoter, makes everyone feel like a friend
Brian Feinblum – knows his stuff about the industry, excellent blogger
Tricia Drammeh – an amazing supporter of indies, all around wise and peaceful person
Derrick Ferguson – Mr. cool to me, excellent movie reviewer, blogger, and writer
John H. Byk – great entertainer providing interesting and fun audio interviews
The Geek Twins – my goto for geekess, fun stuff, but also thought-provoking
Beth – excellent book reviewer and blogger, the reason I check out many books
Bethany – a true blessing and reminder of the good things in life
Andrew Hess – another cool guy, great critiquer and promoter
Tori Jones – A renaissance woman (my sister)

The Rules for the Very Inspiring Blogger Award:
1. Thank the person who nominated you, and link to their blog.
2. Display the award logo.
3. Nominate 15 other bloggers (more or less) and provide a link where they may be found.
4. Go to their blog, leave a comment to let them know they have been nominated.
5. Mention three things that inspired you the most during the past few weeks.

Thank you for taking the time to read this post. If you like it let me know and share it with others. See you next time, Toi Thomas. #thetoiboxofwords

Categories
IWSG

#IWSG February 2015: Waiting & Celebrating

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Created and hosted by the Ninja himself, Alex J. Cavanaugh, the Insecure Writers Support Group posts the 1st Wednesday of every month. Click the image to learn more or sign up.

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So this month a have a few things to celebrate and a few thing to try really hard not to worry about.

1) My wonderful new bud The Armchair Squid nominated me for the Inspiring Blogger Award. To say that I’m honored would be an understatement. I’ve been blogging for almost four years now, but sometimes I still feel like a newbie just trying to get a handle on this blogging thing. When I receive recognition like this, it makes my whole week; and to receive it from a blogger I truly admire is even better. Now here comes my insecurity. Tomorrow I’m going to post my response to this nomination and in turn nominate around 15 other bloggers. I will have no trouble at all finding bloggers who inspire me, I just don’t know how they’ll respond to being nominated by me. Some of them I’m very close to, but others I kinda feel like a fangirl suffering from the delusion that I’m friends with these great bloggers I follow. Plus they’ve probably all been nominated already by someone else.

2) Yesterday I posted a new little project I’ve started to help me keep in touch with some of my author buddies and blog guest. I call it “Long Time No Talk”. It’s basically a blog exchange that allows me to post an update for someone else and they post one for me. Yesterday I shared the update of author M.C.V. Egan. You can click here to see it. My plan is to reach out to others who’ve visited my blog to see what they’ve been up to in the same fashion. It was a lot of fun doing the first one and even if the guest aren’t keen on posting my update to their blog, I’ll still post theirs to mine.

3) Now it’s time to wait. I completed the sequel to my Eternal Curse Series and with help of the IWSGCC I was able to find someone to critique it for me. So I sent it off and now I’m waiting. I’m waiting to see just how much more work the manuscript needs or perhaps how much more work I need as a writer. I’m excited and scared all at the same time.

4) I’m glad to announce, for the few of you who know about it, that I’ll be starting back up with my You Tube channel posts in March. Aside from picking back up my regularly scheduled programming, I’ll also be putting together a miniseries to help promote the sequel to Eternal Curse: Giovanni’s Angel. I’m thinking a cute dog in the videos will help keep them interesting. What do you think?

So now it’s off to completing my list of nomination; do you like these kinds of awards: yes or no? Seriously, is a cute dog a good idea or not? strong>

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After hanging out with Alex, be sure to stop by and visit this month’s co-hosts:
Gwen GardnerDolorahSarah Foster, and M. Pax!

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Click here to visit other IWSG blogs and sites to receive and share more inspiration and support. (This month, I’m #122).

Thank you for taking the time to read this post. If you like it let me know and share it with others. See you next time, Toi Thomas. #thetoiboxofwords