Pleased to Meet You :) and A Contest!

Since today is my very first post (yay!) I thought I’d throw a little party to celebrate :D Check out the end of the post for details. But first things first….

Hi *waves* My name is Michelle. Nice to meet ya :D

I wanted to be a lot of different things “when I grew up” but looking back on it, being a writer was pretty inevitable. Books are my life and always have been. I’m perfectly happy spending long periods of time as a loner. I have a beyond overactive imagination. I love to get sucked into other worlds. I like to learn. I'm creative. I'm passionate. All of these things have been a part of what makes me ME since the day I was born. I think I've been a writer since the moment I took my first breath and maybe even before :) It's who I am. It's how I see the world. It's how I interact with people and with my environment.

Have you seen Beauty and the Beast (the Disney version)? I am soooo Belle. Seriously, it’s scary. I watched the movie with my daughter yesterday. Every time I watch this film, I’m reminded of the first time I saw it.

My whole family (parents, siblings, cousins, a couple friends) went to the theater. We filled up an entire middle row. I sat at the very end. The lights went down, the movie began, we saw the background story on the Beast….and then Belle wandered onto the screen, basket on her arm, nose in her book.

Every single one of the fifteen or so people in our group, in unison, leaned over and stared at me, laughing their heads off. And continued laughing through Belle’s enthusiastic bookstore visit.

Okay, so yeah, maybe you need a crow bar to get the book out of my hand…and maybe occasionally a trip to the bookstore (or office supply store, come to think of it) will make me go crazier than my five year old on caffeine, but hey, I am who I am. (My husband just did a full on snort at the word “occasionally.” So rude.) ;-)

My whole life I’ve had my nose stuck in a book. My mom used to find me sitting behind the couch with a stack of encyclopedias (which, fyi, are a lot more entertaining to read than one might think). I always, ALWAYS have a book. I never leave home without one :)

That insatiable love of reading turned into diaries filled with bad poetry and half written stories, and one day, several years ago, I typed the words THE END on a fully formed novel. And I was hooked.

What about you? Have you always been a writer, no matter what other professions you may have (or still do) worked in along the way? If not, what started the journey for you?

Contest Deets!

I'd love for all my new friends to meet my old friends, and according to my husband my bookshelves are in serious danger of collapsing, and we have no room for another one, sooooo, here's what I've come up with:

For every 5 new followers we get here at the Operation Awesome Blog, I will give away 1 book. Starting right now (with 153 followers), 7am PST going till 11:59pm on Sat the 24th. If we get more than 50 new followers, (because I don't know if I can bear to give away more than 10 books LOL), I'll throw in a $20 gift certificate to the online book retailer of your choice (B&N/Borders/Amazon).*

To Enter:

1. Be or become a follower at Operation Awesome.
2. Give me a shout out in the comments on this post or my post at my personal blog HERE.

That's it! :)

Winner will be announced next Sunday. Good luck!

*International entries are welcome. If an international contestant wins, I'll add $10 to the gift certificate instead of sending books.