Sunshine Blogger Award

Good day!

I hope this post finds you well. There are a few of you out there who are crazy about the stories you read on this site! You’re so crazy, you nominated Stories By Jes2G for the Sunshine Blogger Award SIX times! Wow. DreamsInPixels, iheartdino, Maladi, Pegasus, Simslover, and CathyTea, you’re all crazy, and I love you! 🙂 Thank you for thinking of me. I never get tired of hearing from people who appreciate my work.

So, we all know I rarely ever follow the rules on these things, right? LOL I’m so late in responding to this, and I’m sorry. I’ve been so focused on bringing Juliana back and trying to keep up with the Joneses (ahhhhh, see what I did there? lol), I just haven’t created the time to deal with this. Because I’m so late and everyone I would nominate has probably been nominated 16546 times already and there are so many questions for me to answer (although a lot of them are the same), here’s what I’m going to do. First, I’m not going to nominate anyone. Second, I’ll answer a selection of everyone’s questions so I’m not here all afternoon answering questions lol. However, if you had a burning question you wanted me to answer and I skipped over it, please let me know and I will be more than glad to answer it.

Again, to you six and readers I hear from on a regular basis, thank you all so much! I appreciate you.

DreamsInPixels for Discovering Juliana:

1. What inspired you to write your story?
   Two things: CAS and questions. I actually wrote about this in tomorrow’s read-a-thon post. I created Juliana in CAS, and she looked like she had a story to tell. It was all in her eyes. She looked foreign to me, and I got an idea and asked myself a series of questions which became the premise of the story. What would happen if a foreigner was dropped in another country? How would she survive? What if a local found the foreigner and took her in? What would happen to the foreigner?
2. Who is your favorite character in any story you’ve written?
   Ooooh! Just one? You know I can’t do this lol. Last year my answer would have been Bianca Pruett. I’ve had a lot of “favorites” since then. However, I think I’m gonna stick with my girl on this one. I don’t get to see her as much because I’m not writing F.I.S.H. right now, but I think about her from time to time.
3. Which is your favorite to read: Plot driven or Game driven?
   I don’t have a favorite. I write both and I read both. I like them both equally. I even like when the two are mixed.
4. Name something that was unexpected to happen in your nominated story. Did you keep it in the story or leave it out?
   Discovering Juliana is plot driven, so there are very little surprises if any. The process for writing this story is much like writing a novel, and everything is planned. So, the parts you’ll read that you won’t expect were totally expected by me, he he. I guess the only time something unexpected happens is when I’m like developing characters or plotting. It’s always fun when I learn something new about the characters. Most of the time I include the things I learn in the story, but sometimes I keep it to myself and let it guide me in how I write their personalities. Yes…I know I’m being vague because I don’t want to spoil anything for you! 🙂

iheartdinosx3

1. What was your first experience with SimLit?
   A little story called Alice & Kev! It was a simple little game-driven story that was so inspiring, people are still reading it to this day even though it was written back in the mid 2000s.
2. What is your most favorite family you’ve played on the Sims?
   Duh! The Pruetts! 😛 Can’t get enough of those guys! It’s funny…although there were more nuclear families in that story than I can count and a lot of them were different, because they’re all on the Pruett family tree, I feel the same warmth when I see/play with them all! Some are more dear to me for obvious reasons, but I love all the Pruetts simply because they are Pruetts.
3. What drives you to keep writing your stories?
   Insanity! Next question. LOL Seriously though, there are a number of factors to the story factory in my head. First of all, I love telling stories. Storytelling has always been a thing for me ever since childhood. Secondly, writing is definitely a deep rooted staple in my life. Finally, The Sims is my favorite game! Writing SimLit is an incredible marriage of all those things. I can’t stop doing it!
4. Out of all the food in the Sims games, which one have you always wanted to try?
   Baked Alaska! I have no idea what that is, and for a long time I didn’t even know it was a real food LOL. I went to a diner one time and saw chicken saltimbocca on the menu. I had to try it simply because I only knew it from the game. It was good and nothing like I expected it to be.

Maladi777 for Keeping Up With the Joneses

1. Which one of the five senses would be most terrible for you to lose?
   Oh my goodness! It was be horrible to lose any of them, however, if I ever lose my hearing, I think would lose the will to live. I’d definitely go crazy. I may even think about suicide lol. I wouldn’t do it though. Sound is such a major part of my life. It’s how I learn. It’s how I connect. I am most entertained by music above any other form of entertainment. I just…man…yeah…I can’t lose hearing!
2. Do you believe in reincarnation?
   I believe in an afterlife, but it does not involve reincarnation.
3. If you could gain one of these which one would you choose: under water breathing, flying, telepathy, predicting the future, immortality
   I would never want to live forever. This world is crazy and is getting crazier. I don’t want to be around to see what happens next. Knowing the future would drive me nuts! I wouldn’t know how to act with that information lol. Telepathy would make me evil and give me a God complex. Flying would be cool, but would I actually do it? It seems dangerous LOL. Breathing under water would be my choice. I have a thing with drowning, so being able to breath would definitely take the fear out deep water experiences. Plus, I could go into the ocean and enjoy life under the sea! There’s a whole world down there I don’t know about.
4. Favorite colour?
   ORANGE! 😀

Makplays/Pegasus

1. What’s the best part of writing SimLit for you?
   Being able to combine my love for stories and my favorite game.
2. And the worst part?
   It never freakin ends!! lol
3. What’s one part of your day that you always look forward to?
   heh, well, as a full time worker, quitting time is always a welcomed friend.
4. What’s one thing that always makes you smile?
   Comments from you guys!!

Simslover163

1. What’s your favorite season?
   Definitely fall!
2. Who is your favorite music artist?
   Fred Hammond
3. Tea or coffee or both?
   Tea. I like both, but tea has more to offer me lol. I have a really high caffeine tolerance, so coffee doesn’t really work for me. It just taste good…with lots’o cream and sugar that is.
4. Name one thing you can’t live without.
   GUM

CathyTea

1. You’ve been writing Sim stories fairly regularly for well over a year. How has your approach to writing your blog and stories developed during this time?
   Wow. So much! I originally started Pruett Family Legacy as a mechanism to keep myself entertained while I went through my first ever legacy challenge. I was telling a story, but I didn’t really think of it much as a story per se. I played the game, snapped some pictures, and told you guys what happened during my gameplay in Xavier’s voice. But, later on I got into the whole storytelling aspect as I fell in love with the characters. So, I started doing things to tell a better story. I’ve always read about writing, but I began to read more. I wanted to improve my writing. Fast forward to now—roughly two years later—I don’t just do things without thinking about them now. I don’t begin a story unless I have an idea of what it’s going to be and how it can potentially end even if it’s a simple game-driven story.
2. Most of you have taken at least short breaks from writing your blog. If you have, how do you decide when it’s time for a break? How do you decide when it’s time to come back? If you haven’t taken a break longer than a week, what keeps you going?
   Heh, it’s a good thing I’m answering this question now instead of last year lol. I have a hard time with breaks; I don’t take as many as I should. But, now that I’ve been to the breaking point and took a break, I can see where I need to make some changes. When the ideas aren’t there, I’m trying to force it, or I begin to look to others for answers more often than usual, I know it’s time to take a break. It’s time to come off break when the ideas begin flowing again. Before the era of my break taking, what kept me going was the task master in my head! She’s a hard woman to work for, I tell ya. I’m pretty task oriented. When I started the legacy, all I wanted to do was finish it. So I play and I wrote very consistently because I had to finish it. I didn’t know it would take me that long (I honestly didn’t expect it to, but what did I know?), so I often felt like I was working in the dark looking for that light at the end of the tunnel.
3. What advice do you have for other bloggers, regardless of whether the blog is Sim-related or not?
   Write what needs to be written regardless of its popularity. If you have something you need to say, say it! If there is a story inside of you, tell it! Don’t hold back or think about what people will think. If you cave in and allow others to dictate what you write, eventually you’ll lose the joy of doing it. You may even lose the pride in your work because it’s no longer your own. It’s ok to seek the opinion of others, but at the end of the day, the decision is your own.
4. Has anything ever happened during your blogging experience that threatened to turn you off of blogging, or during your involvement in the SimLit community that threatened your continued participation in the community? If so, how did you handle it, and how did you manage to stay involved?
   When my involvement in the community is threatened, I have to ignore the parties involved. So, whether that means not going to certain threads or not responding to certain people, I have to “just say no” or else the community will become a source of contention in my life and I will stay away.
5. In what ways, if any, does your Simming and SimLit writing get in the way of or detract from your life?
   If I am 100% honest with myself, SimLit is THE most distracting thing in my life right now! I reeeeeally should not spend as much time with it as I do. This thing has taken on a life of its own, and sometimes I lack the discipline to say no. Some things in my life get ignored in favor of SimLit, and I don’t particularly like that.