My friend and fellow blogger, Barbara Ehrentreu, sent me the Life is Good award. I am to answer ten questions and send this to others. My answers are below, but I am going to count on readers to pass the award and questions along to YOUR favorite bloggers.

1. If you blog anonymously, are you happy doing this? If you are not anonymous, do you wish that you had started out anonymously, so that you could be anonymous now?

I am happy to blog under my real name and let people get to know me a bit. Hopefully, this will lead them to check out some of my books.

2. Describe an incident that shows your inner stubborn side.

It is hard to choose an incident that does NOT show my stubborn side.

3. What do you see when you really look at yourself in the mirror?

I see someone growing older. Sometimes I accept this gracefully and gratefully. At other times, I look at the person in the mirror and say, "Get out of here, you old lady!"

4. What is your favorite summer cold drink?

Iced tea. Lemon. No sugar. (I also enjoy sweet vodka iced tea on a really hot day.)

5. When you take time for yourself, what do you do?

Read. Crochet. Walk. In the summer, I love sitting on the beach, staring at the water, writing, napping.

6. Is there something that you still want to accomplish in your life? What is it?

I want to continue guiding my children. They are my most important "accomplishments." I also want my husband to feel my love for him each and every day. And, I would be tickled pink to publish poetry for the rest of my life.

7. When you attended school, were you the class clown, the class overachiever, the shy person, or always ditching?

We moved around a LOT when I was a kid, so I was shy, shy, shy. But, I loved to read and write, so I worked hard and got good grades.

8. If you close your eyes and want to visualize a very poignant moment in your life, what would you see?

I see and hear the doctor telling my husband he felt a mass in his stomach. We both had an immediate, sinking feeling that it was cancer. It was and it was a long struggle, but he beat it!

9. Is it easy for you to share your true self in your blog or are you more comfortable writing posts about other people or events?

I share quite a bit. But, of course, the really personal stuff only my family knows. In this world of social media, we should consider what should be public knowledge before we post. Once on the Internet, it is in cyberspace forever.

10. If you had the choice to sit down and read a book or talk on the phone, which would you do and why?

Read a book. That's the shy and personal side of me coming through, but there it is! I like quiet. I like getting lost in another world. I like the satisfaction of discovering brilliant writing. If I can have some of that silence and am able to surrender to a book for a part of each day, it is then easier for me to be social and reach out to others. Just the way I am, I suppose.

(C) Donna Marie Books