I’ve decided, since I was nominated twice in the same day, to refer to myself as a two-time Mystery Blogger Award winner in the same way a wrestler might refer to themselves as a two-time World Heavyweight Champion. Why? The reason is twofold. Firstly, I like wrestling and have gone beyond the point of being ashamed of it. It’s fun and no less believable/poorly acted than any soap you might watch. Secondly, I’m odd!

Anyway, to the award acceptance malarkey. As aforementioned, I was nominated twice. Kira Scribbled, who by now should need no introduction as I mention her blog enough, nominated me first shortly followed by Rae aka I Will Not Live In Vain. Both blogs are superb; my favourites on WordPress. Kira tells an awesome story and has a gripping style of fiction writing that I’ve never encountered before. Rae tells frank real life tales and also has a separate fiction blog, both of which make for scintillating reads. You have to follow both and if you don’t…well, you’re a douche. You don’t want to be a douche, do you?

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The award was created by Okoto Enigma@https://okotoenigma.wordpress.com

“Mystery Blogger Award” is an award for amazing bloggers with ingenious posts. Their blog not only captivates; it inspires and motivates. They are one of the best out there, and they deserve every recognition they get. This award is also for bloggers who find fun and inspiration in blogging; and they do it with so much love and passion. – Okoto Enigma

Rules for the nominees:

• Display the award logo/image on your blog
• List the rules.
• Thank the blogger who nominated you and provide a link to the nominator’s blog.
• Mention the creator of the award and provide a link as well
• Tell your readers 3 things about yourself
• Answer 5 questions from the nominator
• Nominate 10 or more people
• Notify your nominees by leaving the nomination link in the “comment” of their blog
• Ask your nominees any 5 questions of your choice, with one weird or funny question (specify)

Share the link(s) to your best post(s) 

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Righty dokey; three things about me. Here goes…

• I donated money to charity in order to get Adam Richman of Man Vs Food fame to follow me on Twitter. It worked. I donated to both charities he suggested (he had said either/or, but I went ahead and donated to both as they were great causes). He followed me, still does follow me and sent me private messages to tell me what a stand-up guy I was.
• My favourite star is Betelgeuse. My favourite planet is Saturn. My favourite moon is either Titan or Europa. My favourite asteroid is Ida and its fun little satelite, Dactyl. That’s lots of facts, but I think it all comes under the umbrella of me being a massive astrogeek 😀
• Finally, my list of three favourite humans ever reads as Leonardo da Vinci, a man who was hundreds of years ahead of his time, Che Guevara, probably the epitome of rebellion and fighting against “the man”, and King Leonidas I of Sparta; if you’ve never seen the movie 300 then do so. Or read the real story. The guy was heroic to a level not one man on this earth today could compare with.

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Now I will answer Kira’s questions.

If you had to choose between loosing the sensation of touch in your hands or loosing the ability to taste, which would you pick?

Shit! Why not ask which bollock I want lobbing off, Kira?! as I understand it, the ability to taste is mainly to do with smell, so would that mean I’d lose the ability to smell too? If not, then I’d choose taste because I’d still experience some kind of taste via the loophole I just threw at you. Gotta love technicalities…

What paranormal creature, for example Vampire, Werewolf, Alien,  ect..  would you choose to be real, and why?

Aliens paranormal creatures? Sod it, I’m not getting into technicalities again. Haha. I would choose those weird twin things from The Matrix. You know the ones who have the ability to essentially turn into ghosts of themselves to avoid bullets and what not? They were cool! Played by a pair of TV painters and decorators as well. Did you know that?

What is your favorite food?

This question is too tough to answer as I like so many different things. It’s really a case of what day it is. I make amazing enchiladas and they’re a taste explosion. I love a king prawn samber when I’m in curry mood, but recently I’ve taken a shine to South India/Bengal Garlic as well. I’d eat pizza daily if I could and always fancy different toppings and then there’s everything I’ve ever eaten at Red’s True Barbecue which is the restaurant equivalent to sex with Salma Hayek and Jennifer Aniston at the same time.

Who is your one, all time, favorite author? Other than yourself..lol

I’ve answered this in my blog before. Clive Cussler has commanded more of my time than any other author and deservedly so. His stories have always massively entertained me. Brian Jacques deserves a shout because of how much he got my imagination going in my early teens and although his writings were very profound, I love to read a bit of Søren Kierkegaard.

Is fruit too uppity?      (I guess this is the weird one..?)

Fruit is definitely one of the snobs of the food world. It thinks very highly of itself and has a way of making you feel guilty if you allow it to spoil. You’re a piece of fruit with no emotions; stop emotionally manipulating me, damnit!

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Let’s move swiftly onto Rae’s questions.

If you could be anyone for a week, would you take the chance? Who would you choose to be?

I’d be the head honcho of a top publishing company and commission my novel for publication. I wouldn’t explain shit to anybody either. I’d just tell them to shut up because I’m the boss and threaten them with a kick in the dick/vagina. Then I’d use all of his money (no doubt he’d have loads) to buy as many copies of my novel as I could. Yes, it’d be a hollow way to make my name as an author, but it’d immediately put my name out there and people would choose to read my novel out of sheer intrigue.

Do you have an irrational fear and what is it? (I promise I won’t make fun of you…)

I have a few. Heights, spiders, physical pain…I could go on, but I won’t. My most annoying fear has been the fear of failure. The same fear that has prevented me from trying time and time again. I’m doing absolutely everything in my power to shed this annoying and crippling fear. I’d rather try and fail than not try at all.

Who was your first celebrity crush? How old were you?

This is a tough one, but as memory serves me I really fancied Jane Danson who’s better known as Leanne in Coronation Street. I was probably about twelve at the time. She wasn’t strictly speaking hot, but there was something about her that really got me going. The crush has faded over the years. Actually, I think Leslie Ash came before her. She played Debbie in Men Behaving Badly and was really quite stunning before she decided to go down the cosmetic surgery/botox path and ruin her looks in doing so.

Do you have any quirks or habits that others find amusing or odd?

Since I was about eighteen I’ve had a thing where my boxers simply have to be a name brand. I really couldn’t explain why that’s the case, but it is and it’s remained with me ever since. I won’t wear cheap, nasty boxers. I will wear cheap nasty clothing though. Weird! I also find it really hard to listen to music I don’t know I’ll definitely like, so by a certain artist or of a certain genre. My blog friend, Summer, described it as musical autism. I’ll run with that.

Oh, ummm… a weird or funny question… If God sneezes, what should you say?

How dare you!? Sorry, I got Stephen Fry’s interview with Gay Byrne in my head. Haha. No, I wouldn’t say how dare you. I’d probably say “use a tissue to wipe your snot, not your sleeve you dirty bastard!”

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Now I have to nominate ten other bloggers for the awards, but I’m going to disregard that number. Not because I don’t know ten worthy bloggers, but because I want to get this thing done today at some point. I would have naturally nominated Kira and Rae, but that wouldn’t have made much sense as we’d likely end up in some weird paradox of nominating one another everyday for the rest of time. So here goes…

First up is Eddaz. She was my first follower on WordPress and has been a massive help in bolstering my confidence and my following. Needless to say she’s a magnificent blogger herself and always posts thought provoking things. Anybody who can get me thinking is an instant hit with me. Also, you should buy her recently published book, Unveil The Eagle.

Secondly, my great friend Steve and his blog A Few Words About… Sadly, he hasn’t been able to post much of late for personal reasons that I won’t divulge here. The posts he has written though have been fantastic and very honest. He’s been an invaluable source of support during my mum’s ordeal too. You’ll be hard pressed to meet a better human being than Steve.

Thirdly, I nominate Summer Shines despite the fact that I know she doesn’t accept these kinds of awards anymore. That doesn’t make her any less deserving of them and I want to show my appreciation for her blog by nominating her. If the school of hard knocks was a thing then she’d have surely served her time in it numerous times over. Her honesty is as refreshing as it is horrifying, but she’s fighting back at all the bad stuff and is doing so with aplomb. Her blog deserves your attention, so give it some.

My next nomination is Flash 365. This guy writes fiction in a way that leaves my mind twisted so much that it takes hours to unravel. His abstract way of thinking and writing is honestly brilliant and incomparable to anything else. He’s quickly become one of my very favourite bloggers.

I think I’ll leave it there. It’s not that there aren’t more award worthy bloggers I follow, just more that I don’t have the time to sift through and find them all. Yoiu’re all winners as far as I’m concerned. I wouldn’t be following you if not.

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Penultimately, I must pose five questions of my nominees. The pressure is on to think up something interesting…

1. If you were Wile.E.Coyote, what trap would you have set to catch Road Runner?
2. What is your go to hangover cure? If you don’t drink alcohol just play along anyway.
3. Describe your life in five words.
4. Somebody offers you five hundred grand to stop blogging. Do you accept? Why?
5. You’re given a free shot to slap one celebrity/public figure once really hard in the mush. Who is it and why are you slapping them?

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Finally, it’s the links to what I consider my best/favourite posts during my time as a blogger. I’ll try to keep this brief.

As a fiction writer above all else, I feel a connection with all fiction I’ve written thus far, but especially Dead End and A Survivors Apocalypse Story (which is a sister story to Kira’s Just Another Apocalypse Diary) and is still ongoing. Please take the time to read them if you get chance.

Where more real life stuff is concerned, the story of my swimming career, The Loser That Always Won, took some balls to write. There’s also my post Fatherhood that went down well and the more factual piece, The Article of Astronomical Proportions…, to which there will be a kind of followup in the next couple of weeks.

Obviously I’d suggest you just read the whole lot of my posts, but those are probably my favourites so far.

Thank you for reading the acceptance post of your TWO-TIME MYSTERY BLOGGER AWARD WINNERRRRRRRRRRRRR! Stay tuned for more of my unique brand of lunacy…