And thank you, Annalisa, for my Liebster Award!

Stuff and Nonsense by Amy Cockram is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.

In my recent post accepting my Stylish Blogger Award from Gill, I passed the award on to Annalisa Crawford, who has a great blog about her writing called "Wake up, eat, write, sleep." By an odd coincidence, Annalisa visited my blog on the same day to give me a Liebster Award.  I think prior to this weekend the only award that I had was for having the shortest legs in 6th form (I think I still have the certificate somewhere), and now I get two awards in one weekend.

Annalisa quoted the following rules for the acceptance of the Liebster Award:

The Liebster Award (meaning “friend” in German) is meant to connect us even more and spotlight new bloggers who have less than 200 followers – but hopefully not for long. The rules are:

1. Show your thanks to the blogger who gave you the award by linking back to them.
2. Reveal your top 5 picks and let them know by leaving a comment on their blog.
3. Post the award on your blog.
4. Bask in the love from the most supportive people on the Internet – other writers.
5. And best of all – have fun and spread the karma! 

I do have 5 people in mind

For my first Liebster Award, I'd like to be a bit nepotistic and suggest my husband, Mark Cockram, who writes a blog,"Nerdology." His specialist subjects are Doctor Who, films (he writes often about Laurel and Hardy, and has a project to watch and write on all of the American Film Institute top 100 movies), gadgets and games.  I'm not sure what to write to big him up, as he is so great that no words would do him justice.

For my second nomination, I'd like to suggest Gill Fraser-Lee.  Gill and I found each other through Twitter due to our mutual admiration of the peerless Jeremy Northam.  Gill has an excellent and recently revamped blog about Jeremy, as well as other blogs with different emphases at "Queen of Lukewarm" and "These Foolish Things." Gill is an intelligent, engaging and funny writer who has been very supportive of my blog, and her blogs are well worth checking.  Especially if you like Jeremy Northam.  But many of you probably knew that already....

For my third and fourth nominations I am going to suggest a couple of blogs by people I don't know well personally, but whose blogs I enjoy.  One of my favourite genres to read is crime fiction, and both of these blogs are well written and by people far more knowledgeable than me in this area.

My third nomination is Spriteby, who writes a book blog called "Spriteby's Bokhylle."  I considered nominating Spriteby for the Stylish Blogger Award but, as he/she writes anonymously, I did not think that he/she would welcome being asked to provide the autobiographical information required by the challenge.  I regularly check Spriteby's blog for reviews and for recommendation to advance my own reading in the area, and Spriteby is particularly knowledgeable and enthusiastic about Scandinavian crime fiction.

My fourth choice is Margot Kinberg, who writes a blog at "Confessions of a Mystery Novelist." Like Spriteby, her blog is well-written and shows a wealth of knowledge of her subject.  Margot writes regular "In the spotlight" posts about specific authors and novels, modern and classic, as well as writing posts on themes across crime fiction writing and writers.

My final choice is a friend of mine, Mina Searle, who has written a couple of posts on a blog that she has started called "I would rather be cross stitching."  Mina is a blogging novice who has only written a couple of posts so far, so I would like to offer Mina a Liebster Award as recognition of how much I have enjoyed her couple of posts so far and encouragement to keep on writing.  I enjoy cross stitching to relax also, but I have nowhere near the number of kits to do that Mina has. This is just as well, as I have been doing the same large kit for years (but part of my new relaxation regime is to do 10-15 minutes a day of stitching as "me time").

These awards are with the qualification that, as some bloggers do not include their follower statistics on their blog, I am not sure if Gill, Margot or Spriteby have over 200 followers.  Quite possibly they do - if they don't, they should have - in which case I apologise for unknowingly contravening one of the tenets of the Liebster Awards.  But that doesn't change the fact that I think they are all entertaining writers and worth looking up.