JIM’S PIC OF THE DAY has nominated me for the Versatile Blogger Award. I’m honored to get this nomination from such a fantastic site. Jim posts a ton of beautiful and artistic photos, mainly of wildlife and nature subjects from his extensive travels. I’ve shared links to a good number of them on FaceBook, and they always get great and appreciative responses. Please check it out—you will NOT be disappointed.

Upon receiving this award I have several responsibilities, including,

1. Thank the person who gave me the award.
2. Post a link to their blog.
3. Select 15 other blogs.
4. Nominate the 15 blogs.
5. Tell the person who nominated you 7 things about yourself.

My nominations are, in no particular order:

1. Always Never Quite Right
2. The Yellow Prose of Texas
3. My Parents Are Crazier Than Yours
4. Bean on Parade
5. Rantings of an Amateur Chef
6. What Does That Make Me?
7. Who’s the Minion Here?
8. Marvelous Mo’ and Me
9. B Mused
10. ThatFunnyBlog
11. Temerity Jane
12. The Joy of P Ash
13. OAK – Only Abundant Knowledge
14. Confessions of a Fat Superhero
15. Colorful language + Colorful woman – Skittlefrau

To the nominees, I recommend they go to the Versatile Blogger Award page for more info.

Things about myself:

1. In 7th grade we were allowed to order books from a scholastic book program. Hidden among Little House on the Prairie and Treasure Island was Woody Allen’s Getting Even, a book of humorous essays entirely inappropriate for 7th graders and mostly inappropriate for oilfield workers. I don’t know what they were thinking. I do know that for the next week I got nasty looks for laughing out loud during our silent reading periods. Woody Allen taught me that writing can be hilarious, unexpected, and appalling all at the same time.

2. I entered a county-wide poetry contest when I was 18. Since it was Tarrant County, Texas, that sounds kind of like entering a corn-shucking contest in Manhattan. But a few dozen people entered, and I won with a funky little poem about youth. It consisted of 86 words, and 60 of them had just one syllable. I wrote it in Venice (the real Venice, not Venice, Texas), which would be awfully romantic, if I hadn’t been wasted on the first wine I’d ever drunk. I bought a quart of it for a buck from a kid on the street, and it had about an inch of sediment on the bottom. The moral of the story? Even a poem you write puking in Venice is better than any poem you could write in Texas.

3. I’ve never written anything that, by itself, convinced a woman to have sex with me. I therefore consider myself to be a failure as a writer.

4. For about 15 years I didn’t write a damn thing apart from business memos designed to obscure information rather than communicate it. Instead of writing, I spent my spare time on acting and improvisation. I was able to use them to convince women to sleep with me, so I declare success.

5. I once broke out of the Tarrant County Courthouse using nothing but a rusty nail. It was my finest hour.

6. My sister, Cyn McCurry, is a highly regarded professional artist, combining contemporary art with classic Italian realism. When we were kids, Cyn could make fine distinctions between hues such as Downpipe, Wet Stone, and Antelope, while I couldn’t tell the difference between black, navy, and dark brown unless the light was particularly bright. I still can’t.

7. I’ve written two novels, one of which I’m shopping. That one is titled Six White Horses, and it’s the story of the mice in the Cinderella fairy tale. It’s a bit like Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, but for mice, as it follows them through their own story while big parts of the Cinderella tale are taking place elsewhere. I’m working on a third novel about how Santa Claus went from being a juvenile delinquent to the world’s best loved jolly old elf. It doesn’t have a title yet. I hate coming up with titles.