Oh my gosh, I won an award! Yay me! A very special thanks to Outside Perception for nominating me for this award, and also thank you to Okoto Enigma for creating this award. According to Enigma’s website:
“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.
Okay, I’m blushing. Look, I know these kinds of awards are a bit silly, but still it’s nice to be recognized.
So as part of accepting this award, I’m supposed to tell you three facts about myself and then answer five questions from Outside Perception. Here goes:
Three Facts About J.S. Pailly
- For my day job, I work at a local T.V. news station. I can’t say I like my job, but I do pick up a lot of good story ideas for my true passion, which is…
- Writing! Also illustration, and space stuff, but mostly my true passion is writing.
- In 2012/2013, I wrote a series of short stories about a journalist who travels through time. I have a top-secret plan to rewrite and revise these stories and publish them as an ebook. Oh shoot! That was supposed to be a secret!
Five Questions from Outside Perception
1. Tell us about something you used to believe only to find out it was incorrect.
All my life, I’d heard the story about how Albert Einstein failed math. Turns out it’s not true. Apparently Einstein’s school switched grading scales during his final year, so his school records make it look like he failed when in fact he got perfect marks every single year.
2. If given the choice between cake or death, what would it be?
Well, the obvious answer would be cake, but I suspect this is a trick question. You see, I’ve played Portal. I know the cake is a lie. Death might be preferable.
3. What was your imaginary friend’s name and what special skills did they have?
Was? Did? My imaginary friend is still around! She’s asked me to never reveal her true name on the Internet; however, she makes semi-regular appearances on my blog. She’s my muse, and her special skill is inspiration, supposedly.
4. What is your all time most watched movie?
Star Wars. The three original Star Wars movies, to be precise. They’re the only movies I watched obsessively as a kid and still watch obsessively today.
5. When you have down time… (laugh… yah, I know). Okay, if you ever had down time, what would you do?
I’ve been slowly amassing a Lego collection. Most Lego enthusiasts end up building Lego cities. I’d like to do that someday, except rather than a traditional city, I want to build a huge Lego Mars colony.
As part of this award, I’m supposed to nominate a bunch of other people for the award and ask them five questions of my own choosing.
And the Nominees Are:
- Aperture Astronomy
- A Back of the Envelope Calculation
- Blog, Blogger, Bloggest
- Cool Kid
- The Daily Story
- Flying Squirrel Outdoors
- Namy Says So
- No Page Left Blank
- Planet Simon
- Rosie Writes
- Scott’s Sky Watch
- Self Aware Patterns
My Questions
- What do you want to be when you grow up?
- What book has had the most influence on you?
- Has a movie ever brought you to tears? If so, what movie was it?
- If you were a dinosaur, which dinosaur do you think you’d be and why?
- What will be the title of your autobiography?
Now I don’t want to put any pressure on anybody, because I know not everyone likes these kinds of blogging award things. If I nominated you and you want to accept the award, the rules are listed below. If not, I still got to link to some pretty cool blogs, and that makes me happy.
Award Rules
- Put the award logo on your blog.
- List the rules.
- Thank whoever nominated you and link to their blog.
- Mention the creator of the award (Okoto Enigma) and provide a link as well.
- Tell your readers 3 things about yourself.
- Nominate roughly 10 – 20 people for this award.
- Notify your nominees by commenting on their blogs.
- Ask your nominees five questions.
- Share a link to your best/favorite post that you’ve written.
Right, almost forgot about that last thing. I’m not sure if this is my best or my favorite post, but there is a post that’s been on my mind a lot lately for some reason. It’s an old IWSG post called “Research Rant.”
Planet Pailly 
Thanks for the nomination. Look for my response sometime during the week.
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Awesome! I look forward to it.
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Thanks James! I don’t really do these kinds of blog posts, but I will give some quick replies to your questions here.
What do you want to be when you grow up?
An inventor.
What book has had the most influence on you?
Dune.
Has a movie ever brought you to tears? If so, what movie was it?
Any romantic comedy.
If you were a dinosaur, which dinosaur do you think you’d be and why?
A velociraptor, because I am small and annoying.
What will be the title of your autobiography?
Oh, that’s tricky. I’m going to avoid answering this, as I like to think my life is only half written, and I don’t know where it’s going (maybe one day Ms Talie Tappler will appear and ask me some leading questions.)
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Nice. Dune would be my pick as well. It’s shaped me as a writer and a human being in so many ways. As for Talie’s leading questions… if that ever happens, it might be advisable to run the other way.
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Your Imaginary friend has seems to be related to mine 🙂
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(Imaginary friend waves hello.)
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Thanks James! Very grateful for the link. Similar to Steve, these types of post aren’t my thing, but I’ll respond to some of the questions here.
What do you want to be when you grow up?
At my stage in life, that question translates into what I want to be when I retire. I currently want to be a SFF book author.
What book has had the most influence on you?
Can’t really nail it down to just one. Major non-fiction influences: Complete Confidence: A Handbook
Team of Rivals
Who Wrote the Bible?
Major fictional influences are all over the science fiction and fantasy map (Tolkien, Asimov, Clarke, Vance, Heinlein, Scalzi, Stross, etc), but I’d say as a potential author, Alastair Reynolds has probably had more influence on me for showing how to make hard space opera entertaining.
Has a movie ever brought you to tears? If so, what movie was it?
Yes, Terms of Endearment, specifically the scene where the dying mother forgives her obnoxious son, and he doesn’t care.
If you were a dinosaur, which dinosaur do you think you’d be and why?
Sorry, not really familiar enough with dinosaurs to answer.
What will be the title of your autobiography?
Even if I were famous and people were interested, I’d be way too embarrassed to write a whole book just on myself.
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I appreciate you taking the time to answer my questions! Sounds like we’ve read a lot of the same things, though I’m not familiar with Alastair Reynolds. I’ll have to check out some of his work. Any book in particular you’d recommend?
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My favorite Reynolds novel is ‘House of Suns’. Another good intro is his debut novel, ‘Revelation Space’, the first in a series he sets in that universe. In most of his settings, FTL is impossible, but he still manages to evoke a sense of grand interstellar adventure. My only beef with the Revelation series is that I think he tends to overdo the grimness, but he lightens up in later books.
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That sounds really interesting. I’m adding “Revelation Space” to my reading list. I really appreciate it when a science fiction writer can do grand space opera type stories without FTL. I don’t mind FTL in Sci-Fi, but it’s really cool when a writer manages to do without it.
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Great award, thanks for the nomination 😊
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You’re very welcome!
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Thank you for the nomination! I’m so speechless lol. I haven’t read most of your A to Z Challenge blogs yet :p And you’re working at a TV station, how cool is that! Let me guess — as a news writer?
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Sadly no. They did let me do a little writing for a while, whenever science was in the news, but my primary job responsibilities lie more on the video production side of things.
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Hey there! I need to catch up with this. I’m gonna read more of your A to Z challenge blogs too!
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Thanks for the nomination, James, I like your stories too! I don’t think I have ten blogs to nominate so I figured I’d answer here too, if that’s okay. In the meantime I need to start following more blogs that aren’t of my favorite (and famous) writers. I’m not sure Neil Gaiman would be as willing as we are here… but, hey, you’re in good company.
It’s fun to get to know bloggers better. I have a friend who runs a Lego company with the local kids, they build stuff and try to enter them into official Lego kits. I wish he lived closer so I could join up with my girls 😉
What do you want to be when you grow up?
A writer. A Time Lord’s companion. Or a dragon farmer. Maybe even a mermaid … who writes.
What book has had the most influence on you?
I’m not religious, but probably the Bible. My folks are/were super-devout, so I wasn’t allowed reading anything magical or magic-related when I was kid. That includes fairy tales with witches, stuff like that. Naturally, I gravitated to the forbidden, but I had to be sneaky so I wouldn’t be punished. This made me learn to see the magic hiding in everyday corners and objects, and it also made me have to come up with my own idea of what magic is. Now I have the freedom to make my own choices, but the skills I picked up have served me well in the imagination department.
Has a movie ever brought you to tears? If so, what movie was it?
Millions of them, but more recently, Maleficent. The scene where she wakes up after Stefan did that terrible thing to her. (no spoilers, just in case). It would have turned me into a villain too, I think.
If you were a dinosaur, which dinosaur do you think you’d be and why?
I would be a Theropod. We have a cast of a Theropod’s footprint on our wall that we got after hiking to see the original in Tumbler Ridge, BC (from a gift shop, we weren’t allowed to make the cast). I chose this guy because I like the metaphor of leaving a footprint on the world long after you’re gone, mostly just to mess with people who want to believe you never existed.
What will be the title of your autobiography?
Ramblings of a Dragon Farmer, Mermaid, Writer, and Time Lord’s Companion – holey moley, James, that book sounds amazing! I best get started on that …
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I can see why you’re a writer. You’ve found a lot in your life to inspire you. I love your metaphor about the theropod footprint and leaving your mark on the world. And I also teared up a little in Maleficent. That was a powerful movie, and I wasn’t expecting it to be.
What you said about the Bible is interesting to me. I’d say the Bible has had a profound influence on my life as well, though perhaps not always in a positive way.
If you’re a Lego fan, you might want to check out True North Bricks. I was going to nominate his blog too, but then I saw he’d already accepted the award. He did a really interesting post about using Lego for science education, which I liked a lot.
https://truenorthbricks.wordpress.com/2017/04/24/t-is-for-teaching/
Good luck with your autobiography. That does sound really good. I look forward to reading it someday!
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I’ll have to share that with my Lego friend, too.
I don’t the Bible influence was always positive with me, either. My folks don’t have much to do with me these days, which is not pleasant, but also their choice. I’ll take the good where it came
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I’m sorry to hear that. You’re a wonderful writer, and although I only know you through the Internet, you seem like you’re a kind and compassionate human being. I’m glad to know you, and I think your parents are missing out on a lot.
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Congratulations on the award. You certainly do have interesting blog posts. With cartoons, no less!
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Thanks. I try to keep it fun for myself and whoever’s reading.
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