One Lovely Blog Award

Fellow writer J.E.Wyatt has tagged me for the One Lovely Blog Award (to participate in a blog tour where we share 7 curious facts about our life). Be sure to check out her lovely answers!

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Here are the rules.

Rules:

1.       Share 7 Lovely Facts about myself

2.      Link to 15 blogs (or as many as possible) that I enjoy reading….I don’t read that many blogs regularly, so I’ve just added the ones I do.

3.      Nominate the authors of those blogs to participate and do the same, linking back to the original Lovely blog. (That would be this page)

       

Without further ado, here are some curious facts about me!

I like to rollerblade on London's streets. A bit like this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oat0KI4AUGs

My first book, The White Rajah features head-hunters in Borneo. I have a Borneo head-hunter’s sword on the wall. I bought it while I was visiting a longhouse in Sarawak.

In Burke in the Land of Silver my hero travels across the Andes on horseback while the mountains are still covered in snow, which is considered a dangerous time of year to make the trip. I wanted to know what it would be like, so I decided to try it myself: http://thewhiterajah.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/his-majestys-confidential-agent.html

I love dancing tango and have danced in London, Paris, Buenos Aires and in Reykjavik in Iceland.

I used to keep a ferret, who loved to go out for walks on a lead.

They once changed the direction of the skating on the big ice rink in Central Park so that my partner and I could dance anti-clockwise patterns on it. It was amazing and I still can’t believe they did it for us. (Thank you, lovely people in Central Park.)

In one of the chapels of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem there’s a mosaic that was made in the 1970s. I put in one of the stones. (I knew the mosaicist.) The church might still be there in a thousand years and, I hope, there’ll be one stone in one mosaic in one chapel that was done by me. I feel quite good about that.

Photo by Jorge Lascar. Creative Commons licence 

Now, who's up next? Here are some writers (and stellar bloggers) it would be nice to know more about. (If you’ve already done this blog hop or don’t have the time, please feel free to decline.)

Congratulations to:

Diane L Major – prolific blogger, as-yet-unpublished author, scarily erudite amateur historian and generally interesting person

Amy Saia – writer, musician and artist who somehow gets to bring up her children and write her blog. Not only talented but beautiful.

Sharon Robards – author of (among other things) Unforgivable, which is one of the best books I’ve read this year.

Tracy R Franklin – a talented poet who has had more experiences in her first few decades than most of us manage in a lifetime. It will be interesting to see how she limits herself to seven things.

Marie Antoinette's Diamonds That’s the name of the blog, not the blogger, obviously. She’s anonymous and has been working on a novel about Queen Antoinette’s diamonds more or less forever. She has researched this (and everything related to it) in massive details. Anyone interested in late 18^th century France (Oh, go on! You must be!) should read this blog

Kit Moss is particularly interested in the way that history treats gay, lesbian and transsexual characters. Interesting subject, interesting person.

S. A. Meade Another author who likes to write about gay people, often in historical settings. She loves to cook and that means she blogs some rather nice recipes as well. (Not that I’m ever going to cook them because they involve actually working in the kitchen, but I can dream.)

Jenny Kane. Some writers reach out and support others for no particular reason at all. Jenny is one of those lovely people. I’m happy to plug her and her blog because, heaven knows, she’s plugged me often enough.