A Very Inspiring Blogger Award

It feels so rewarding! My blog, which is centered around themes of creativity in art and writing, has been in existence for only two years, with traffic sky-rocketting to over 13,000 visits last month--and now it has been tapped by fellow author and blogger Catherine Cavendish for the Very Inspiring Blogger Award. 

Catherine writes mainly paranormal horror fiction. She lives with a longsuffering husband and mildly eccentric tortoiseshell cat in North Wales. Their home is in a building dating back to the mid 18^th century which is haunted by a friendly ghost, who announces her presence by footsteps, switching lights on and strange phenomena involving the washing machine and the TV. When not slaving over a hot computer, she enjoys wandering around Neolithic stone circles and visiting old haunted houses.

Seven things about me:

• In high-school I wrote a research project about the Israeli poet Uri Zvi Grinberg, who was politically out-of-fashion at the time. As a result, I received a failing grade for this project. The failing grade could have been corrected by taking an exam, which I refused to do, on principle. This meant never finishing my matriculation requirements for completing high-school requirements.
• I earned my B.A. in Architecture and Town Planning from the Technion in Haifa, Israel,  my M.A. in Architecture from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy NY, and my M.S. degree in Computer Science from the University of Michigan.
• Since I never learned the proper technique for breast-stroke, I taught myself to swim using my own 'technique', swimming underwater for three strokes and coming up for a breath on the fourth. Looks a bit unconventional (which means, funny) but is gets me up and down the pool with the rest of the swimmers...
• I do things the Indie way, designing my own book covers (using my own art) formatting the text for print, and converting it to ebook format, all single-handedly.
• My career spanned several professions—first as an architect, and later as a software engineer, software team leader, software manager and a software consultant, with an emphasis on user interface for medical instruments devices. The longest stretch of work was my eight years for Philips Ultrasound, developing a high-end ultrasound machine that never made it to market, because the company went out of business. This experience gave me the fine detail for the scene in my novel, Apart From Love, where Anita's womb is being scanned.
• I travelled to China, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Holland, Britain, France, Italy, Germany, Mexico, Argentina, and Brazil.
• During this year, I published the first volume of The David Chronicles, titled Rise to Power. I am working furiously on the second volume, titled A Peek At Bathsheba, and I'm elated at the flow of it! I'm writing as fast as I can, trying to keep up with my character, David.  

My choice of inspiring blogs you will want to check out:

• Julia Gousseva 
• Christian Ashley
• Kim Scott
• Libby Fischer Hellman
• MCV Egan
• Stacy Juba
• Barbara Silkstone
• Charity Parkerson
• Regina Puckett
• James DiBenedetto
• Carmen DeSousa 
• Donna Fassano
• Katheryn Lane
• Brenda Kearns

The Rules:

•     Display the award logo on your blog.
•     Link back to the person who nominated you.
•     State 7 things about yourself.
•     Nominate 15 bloggers for this award and link to them.
•     Notify those bloggers of the nomination and the award’s requirements