“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.

Thanks, Debs, for thinking about me for this awards. It’s so exciting! And sorry it took me this long to write an acceptance post, but here I am. I would have never skipped this!

I ‘met’ Debs during the AtoZ Challenge. She blogged about jazz this year and, I mean, it was kind of serendipity that we would meet.

The Mystery Blogger Award, Rules

Rule 1: Put the award logo on your blog
Rule 2: List the rules
Rule 3: Thank whoever nominated you and link to their blog
Rule 4: Mention and link to the creator of the award Okoto Enigma
Rule 5: Tell your readers 3 things about yourself

1. I’m Italian, but I’ve been writing in English for the past 15 years. And today, I’m not even sure I’d be able to write fiction in my native tongue. Which is kind of weird.
2. I’ve been a bookseller also for the past 15 years. Best job ever.
3. If I had a garden, I’d love to have a tortoise pet.

Rule 6: Nominate roughly 10 – 20 people for this award:

Because this is the third acceptance post I write in three months, I’ll leave this open. So please, feel free to grab the award and have fun with the questions if you feel like it. Or if you feel like answering just a few of the questions in the comment section, please go ahead!

Rule 7: Notify your nominees by commenting on their blogs

Rule 8: Ask your nominees five questions:

1. Summer is the season of traveling. Where would you like to go that you have not been yet?
2. For your holiday, do you prefer to travel around, or to choose a destination and enjoy that?
3. Sometime, the destination isn’t important. It’s the journey that counts. I’ve always believe that. How about you?
4. Organised trip or going on a solo adventure?
5. If you could choose a season which would last the entire year, which one would that be?
6. weird/funny: If thirteen dwarves presented themselves at your door wanting to hire you as a burglar and retrieve a treasure from a dragon, what would you do?

Rule 9: Share a link to your best/favorite post that you’ve written:

My series about the New Woman’s New Look is one of the most clicked on my blog. So I think I’ll showcase the first post in that series. It’s a series I’ve greatly enjoyed writing and a subject I’ll probably write about again in the future.

And finally, onto the questions asked of me …

Questions asked by Debs

1. Do you have an “ideal reader” of your blog in mind to whom you address your posts?

My ideal reader is certainly interested in history, especially the people’s history, not the big-event history we normally learn at school. She likes reading of how normal people like us lived their life in a different time and how they felt about it.
But she’s also a dreamer, who sees magic everywhere and likes to read stories of history and magic.

So, how did I go? Are you that kind of reader?

2. Do you use a fountain pen, ballpoint or pencil when you write?

I use a ballpoint, preferably blue. Perhaps a Stadtler with the long point.

I usually write my first draft on pc (unless it is a short story), then do all my rewrites and editing on paper. I find writing longhand helps me concentrating at a deeper level. That’s why I also take all my notes longhand: it helps me remember them more easily.

3. Do you have any subjects which – for you – are off-limits for blogging?

I don’t really like talking private stuff on my blog. One thing is talking about me, another thing is talking about my private life.

4. As a reader, do you prefer lots of pictures or lots of words in a blog?

I like a good mix of both. Sometimes, a picture says more than a thousand words. But pictures are static. Words are dynamic and their meaning can change as we change. And our thoughts may change as the words’ meaning change.

Language is a powerful tool we don’t often use at its fullest.

5. Your favourite cake? Or biscuit/cookie?

I have two, which are traditional of the place where I live. One is called Sbrisolona and it’s a crumbling cake made of equal amount of wheat and corn flour, mixed with grounded almonds, which is supposed to be eaten sprinkled with grappa (a hard liquor of my parts). It’s a traditional desert of Mantova, the city south of Isola della Scala (where I live).

The other is the Torta Russa, which is a batter of almond and amaretti biscuits cake inside a puff pastry crust, which is traditional of Verona (north of Isola and my province main city).

Two very different cakes in spite the similar ingredients, and both delicious.

6. What is your favourite fantasy creature?

Oh dear, so many.

Well, this will sound obvious, but Tolkien’s Elf culture is one of the most fascinating and complex I’ve read, though I also like his Dwarf culture a lot.

I also really enjoyed Stan Nichols’s Orc culture, very well though out and definitely peculiar.

But also Daniel Abraham’s culture in the Long Prince Quartet, with its magic system base on poetry.

There’s no shortage of awesome fantasy cultures out there.

Thanks again to Debs for giving me this beautiful awards, and folk do get fun with the questions in the comment section!