Zoe over at Hope Dream Wait very kindly nominated RFTM for the Blogger Recognition Award this month.  Whoop whoop!  What a cheery surprise for an April morning – it sure enough put a smile on my face.  So thank you, Zoe, and keep on spreading the sunshine over at your own blog.

The Rules:

  1. Thank the blogger who nominated you and link to their blog.
  2. Write a post to share your award.
  3. Give a brief story of how your blog started.
  4. Give two pieces of advice for new bloggers.
  5. Select 10 to 15 bloggers for this award.
  6. Comment on each blog to let them know you nominated them and link back to this post.

I was lucky enough to be nominated for this award in February, so I’m gonna rise to the challenge and follow the rules without repeating my post.  There’s more than one way to tell a story, after all.

Riddle from the Middle’s beginning:

I’m a talker, a story teller, an Italian with a (teeny tiny) tendency toward hyperbole.  BrightSide likes to say I can turn a two minute message into a twenty minute anecdote.  On good days he follows all the way through; on not-so-good ones his eyes glaze over eight minutes in.  Which naturally led to the question: where could I tell my stories, long and winding or short and sweet, without the glaze over factor?  I’d been using e-mail and Facebook, but it was time to dive deep into the internet and try my hand at blogging.  Thus began Riddle from the Middle and the complete elimination of any misconception that I have my sh*t together in this house.

Advice for new bloggers:

**  Ready for irony?  Think long and hard about what you’re passionate about, then eliminate what’s extraneous in your blog.  (This from the woman who blogs about everything from kids to pets to politics to health issues.)  Your blog will be stronger if you focus.  Instead of a scattershot approach, zero in on what’s important to you and spend your time on that.

**  Also ridiculously ironic, don’t let anyone tell you how to blog.  (I’ll pause while you laugh yourself silly now.)  This is your baby, your creation, and only you know what’s right for it.  Publish often, publish weekly, publish regular features or only on current topics of interest.  Just know that you train your readers – if you commit to posting twice a week then drop off the map for a month, you’ll lose some of your audience.

Visit some of my nominees:

1.  Fourth Generation Farmgirl

2.  Let Me Start By Saying

3.  Rantings of a Mad Queen

4.  K E Garland

5.  Parenting Is Funny

6.  Anonymously Autistic

7.  A Thomas Point of View

8.  Rachel Mankowitz

9.  Wanderings of an Elusive Mind

10.  But I Smile Anyway

11.  Sprawly

12.  Saddles to Shorelines and life as it comes

13.  Ah Dad…

14.  Skipah’s Realm

15.  Three’s A Herd