Irresistibly Sweet Blog Award

The wonderful Suzanne Pitner from TeacherWriter.net sent me this award. She’s a fellow writer and #ROW80 combatant ;). Thank you so much, Suzanne! Check out this delicious picture!

Delicious, no? Now I’m supposed to share seven random facts about me. Random facts that you likely never wanted to know, but that’s okay. 😀

1. I turned down two full-ride drama scholarships my senior year in high school to join the USAF. Growing up poor made me desperate to have a steady income. We weren’t at war at the time, so I had joined for the educational opportunities (to pursue much later in life) and travel. It was probably the best decision of my life.
2. Boredom is dangerous for me. I’ve boxed, competed in MMA (I’m not kidding!), become a bartender, learned knife defense tactics, learned to salsa, competed in wheelchair basketball after my back injury, learned (and now compete in) archery, created a cupcake war explosion in my kitchen, and many other things that makes my husband sigh in resignation. I call it research. My back doc calls it sabotage. Note: I never said I was any good at any of these…just that I learned. A lot. 😉
3. The first non-processed food I learned to cook was Puerto Rican rice and beans. My mother-in-law from my first marriage came to visit us for a couple of weeks. In that time, she taught me everything she knew. When we visited PR one Christmas, a neighbor of my in-laws was so excited a white girl was learning PR food, that he ran out and bought Puerto Rican Cookery for me. It has been a tool in my cooking arsenal ever since.
4. I am five feet tall and look like the sweet and innocent girl-next-door type. People assume I write children’s fiction and refuse to believe most of #2. I have pictures and videos to prove it, however. 😉 And we all know what I write should only be read by those 18 and older.
5. My first friends in the service were students from SERE (Survival, Evasion, Rescue, Escape) and EOD (Explosive Ordinance Disposal-bomb disposal peeps). As an electronics trainee, I was far more interested in their schools. Not to do it myself, but just fascinated with that side of the military. That fascination would lead to some interesting roads during my military career. I met up with special forces, special ops, linguists, you name it. If they were willing to talk about their jobs (only unclassified information, people…I never went for anything that could endanger my fellow servicemen and women.), I was willing to learn. Oh the stories…but I digress.
6. I’m terrible at speaking other languages, but have noticed an intuition for understanding most of everyday conversation. It takes two weeks of immersion in the area or about a month or two of sporadic interaction and I can understand the basics. Unfortunately, the information dumps out of my mind the moment I leave the country. Useful for finding a bathroom…but only if they talk about it first. 😉
7. I’ve lived in 38 homes in 33 years. No joke, and this doesn’t count temporary duty assignments or deployments. Growing up was interesting. My dad worked a lot of mechanical specialist jobs. He would take the jobs no one else was crazy enough to (that meant a lot of serious injuries in his life). They were always temporary so we would move where the money was. We would move in, set up house, and work at whatever was available. The most common of which was modern-day tenant farming. I learned to drive a tractor before I drove a car. 😉 This rolling stone mentality followed me into my military life. My AF career was peppered with jobs/deployments/shifts no one else wanted to take…just like my dad, I guess. lol. Strangely enough, I would get an itch to move every 1-2 years. It wasn’t until my latest injury overseas that I wanted to grow roots and settle down.

So that’s it. Seven random facts you likely never wanted to know about me. 😀 Now I’m supposed to nominate ten others for this award. Instead of doing that, I’m going to give you ten links to places I love to visit. If those bloggers choose to participate…awesome! If not, there’s no pressure from me. 🙂 Please note that I admire every one of these people. They are my go-to sites for several reasons. So without further ado:

• Lynn Viehl/S.L.Viehl of the Paperback Writing blog. She is absolutely fabulous, and I love her sense of humor.
• D. Renee Bagby Presents First Chapters. Every Monday, this lovely lady delivers first chapters of some great new releases. I always hit up the blog when I’m looking for something quick and hot to read.
• Kim Knox/Kim Rees of the Darkness and Romance blog. She posts so many awesome things. I absolutely crave her six sentence Sunday entries. Did I mention her books are FANTASTIC?? Her Behind the Scenes stuff on her website is awesome. I love to see what inspires an author to write a story. But then again, I’m a Behind the Music fan too! 😀
• Lacey Savage/Hunter Raines’ blog. This lady is my inspiration. We’ve known each other since I was a book writing virgin. We were in the trenches through a very intense four month class hosted by Morgan Hawke and Angela Knight. NYT bestsellers and newbies alike had their work shredded and worked over. And let me tell you…we were all better for it!
• That leads me to Morgan Hawke’s blog, Dark Erotica. As the name implies, it’s not work or child friendly, but the information she has is completely invaluable.
• I’m a crafting fanatic so I am a frequent flyer of the Craftzine Blog. Man, I love how their site inspires my inner crafting demon. 😀
• Hands down one of the best cooking sites I’ve ever been to: Cooking by the Seat of Our Pants or cbsop.com. If you check out nothing else…please check out his site and the perfect roasted turkey recipe. It will be the easiest (and therefore stress-free) turkey you’ve ever made.
• Community sites are the core strength of the writing world, IMHO. I don’t know what I would have done without forums like Harlequin’s Write Stuff and the Romance Divas. I know this doesn’t exactly fit into the rules, but I think it’s important to share…especially since quite a few of you have Harlequin Romance as a publishing goal. Did you know that their editors stop by the boards all the time to answer questions?
• Lexxie Couper‘s titles always give me a chuckle. And her books are smokin’ hawt. I love her first page sneak peeks. She is also fantastic to follow on twitter.
• This last one comes with a disclaimer. When the lovely Suzanne offered up this wonderful award, I realized that I didn’t have 10 blogs that I frequent.  I know. I know. Crazy, right? Facebook, twitter, and a few websites were all I touched base with. Why is that? I had to cut off my internet procrastination so I did it cold turkey. In the spirit of this Meme, I decided to head to a blog I’ve never visited. It took a few minutes of racking my brain to find one. Jess Dee is a recent addition to my blog luv. I’ve been hearing about her from Lexxie Couper and Maggie Nash for quite a while. When I popped over to her blog, I was snagged. Her posts are cute and hilarious. Her books are steamy and omg delicious. Plus her name is Jess, and that happens to be part of my real first name (Jessica, in case you were wondering).

So that’s it, peeps. Seven facts you didn’t know about me and ten places you should check out. For the ladies and gents I listed, they are welcome to continue the trend and snag the award png from this page.

Have a wonderful week, all!

Keep Writing!

Dawn