A big thank you to Don Charisma who awarded me this badge. 

In case you’re not one of his gazillion followers, Don lives in Thailand and posts, among other things, amazing sunsets. He took a break from Photoshop to spread a little blog love among his legion of blogger friends, and I turned out to be one of them.

Just goes to show you don’t have to be influential to be an influential blogger, but it helps to know someone who is. If you check out Don’s blog you’ll soon see what a thoroughly bloody nice bloke he is too. Being British, he’ll know exactly what that means.

Now I’m passing on the same award to 10 more bloggers. Whether they’re the kind of blogger who accepts awards or not is immaterial. They’re getting a mention today because they’re influential to me.

Fellow writer Debbie Young: she’s prolific, smart, resourceful, warm, supportive and all the other things you could wish for. I’m in danger of using up a whole dictionary to describe her so why don’t you just check out her blog ? And if you have anything to do with type 1 diabetes, her book Coming to Terms with Type 1 Diabetes is a must.

Australian-born Jessica Bell, author of non-fiction, literary fiction and poetry. She’s also an artist, musician and designer, which quite frankly is way too much talent for one person. Her lovely blog is the Alliterative Allomorph.

Queen of self-publishing Catherine Ryan Howard whose blog Catherine, Caffeinated dispenses laughs along with sound advice.

The Write Romantics

The fine people at The Write Romantics.

They’re all members of the Romantic Novelists’ Association’s New Writer Scheme, and they also run a great virtual book club for romantic fiction. 

Mary Lane who blogs at New York Cliche. It’s an American-sized slice of life and it makes me long to hop on a plane across the pond, which I don’t do often enough.

Another Australian, Eli Glasman, author (published and everything!), whose blog is witty and thought-provoking.  His debut novel The Boy’s Own Manual to Being a Proper Jew is about a homosexual boy in an orthodox Jewish community and will be out soon. As it were.

Anne Wainscott who blogs at The Writing Well.  She’s an accomplished story-teller and I’m looking forward to reading the historical novel she’s currently working on.

Michael La Ronn, the author of Decision Select novels. Not your everyday contemporary fantasies, because in Michael’s stories the reader gets to decide what happens.

The Lancet’s student blog, where you can find out what medical students think of issues such as bereavement and the demise of the traditional stethoscope.

Doctor and writer Richard Smith, who contributes to the British Medical Journal blogs. I might not necessarily agree with him, but he’s always got plenty to say.

Finally Don asked me to include a YouTube video of my current favourite song. You came so close, Lana del Rey, but Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons had the edge with their classic Beggin’.  It’ll be in the CD player as soon as I pick up the rental car at Newark airport next month and head south on the NJ Turnpike to see my US family.