In praise of Versatility by Zoë Sharp

Last week I was honoured and somewhat surprised to be nominated for the Versatile Blogger Award by be-kilted Scottish fellow scribe Seumas Gallacher, bless his little Sgian-dubh. And if you want to see pictures, you’ll have to visit his blog :))

Apparently the VBA is awarded by bloggers to other bloggers who happen to witter on about things that somebody, somewhere, might concievably find interesting or entertaining. What a lovely thought.

The requirements are that I then nominate up to fifteen other bloggers I find interesting or entertaining, and so it goes on until we all start attempting to nominate each other several times over, or we lie behind the sofa when we hear the knock on the door and pretend to be out.

So, here are my favourites in strictly alphabetical order:

Christine Kling — Sailing Writer

Graham Smith — CrimeSquad

J Sydney Jones — Scene of the Crime

Jochem Vandersteen — Sons of Spade

Jungle Red Writers

Lee Goldberg — A Writer’s Life

Lesa Holstine — Lesa’s Book Critiques

Murder Is Everywhere

Paul D Brazill — You Would Say That, Wouldn’t You? and Brit Grit Alley

Rhian Davies — It’s A Crime

Richard Godwin — Chin Wags At The Slaughterhouse

Russel D McLean — Do Some Damage and These Aye Mean Streets

Seeley James — Headquarters for thriller readers

Timothy Hallinan — Blog Cabin

Tony Black — Pulp Pusher
Profuse apologies to anyone I’ve missed out!

The second requirement of all this is to reveal seven things you don’t know about me. Hmm, that’s tricky but I’ll give it a whirl: 


I learned to scuba dive as a child before I could swim. Still not the world’s best swimmer — would rather have a wetsuit and pair of fins.

I hate filling in forms.

I can dry-stone wall.

I once took part in a rodeo
.
I have a thing about feet — particularly ones with cracked heels, hairy toes and curling yellowed nails. Yuck!

I can kill you where you stand — oh, hang on, everybody knows that about me. I’ll try again: I am a qualified British Horse Society riding instructor and used to love side-saddle.

I used to crew boats as an astro-navigator and still have my own sextant — a gift from my father.

That’s it from me. Thank you again to Seumas for the nod.

This week’s Word of the Week is fictioneer — one who writes fiction especially in quantity rather than quality, a word coined in 1923 and from the Latin fingere from which we also get feign and figment. 

Zoë Sharp