The Versatile Blogger Award

Last week, while I was busy with a guest author, I had the honor of being recognized with the Versatile Blogger Award by the Killer Crafts and Crafty Killers Blog. Thanks, Anastasia Pollack (actually, the protagonist of Lois Winston's crafting mystery series)! As a recipient of the award, I'm supposed to follow a few rules:

1. Thank the award-giver and link back to them in your post. (done)

2. Share 7 things about yourself.

3. Pass this award along to 15 others.

4. Contact your chosen bloggers to let them know about the award.

Here goes…

Seven Things About Beth Groundwater

1. I love both cats and dogs. I used to have two cats named Merry and Pippin (after the Tolkien hobbit characters), then I had a black lab mix dog named Blackie. I'm now pet-less, but I stop to stroke other people's animals as often as I can.

2. My favorite colors are green and purple.

3. I'm a chocoholic, the darker the better, and after that, my favorite food is berries of all kinds.

4. Like my river ranger character Mandy Tanner in my Rocky Mountain Outdoor Adventures mystery series, I used to be a "river rat" in the 1980s, running whitewater rivers in the southeast in an open-boat canoe stuffed full of floatation bags. I was an active member of Canoe Cruisers in the Washington DC area and knew Roger Corbett, a river guidebook author, very well, often taking a turn as his bow paddler.

5. My favorite winter sport is alpine skiing, and I can ski any level of slope, from Blue Square (intermediate) to Double Black Diamond (expert), though I take those steep slopes very slowly. I actually prefer moguls on the steep slopes, because they help slow me down. I'm definitely NOT a speed demon!

6. I like to read widely both within and outside of my genre (mystery), and I usually read for awhile in bed before falling asleep.

7. I live in Breckenridge, Colorado, and love the beautiful mountains and rivers of my home state. That's why I enjoy setting my mystery novels in the state.

Fifteen Blogs I Recommend

Writing & reading related:

Mystery Scene Magazine's Blog

Buried Under Books

dru's book musings

The Blood-Red Pencil

Bill Crider's Pop Culture Magazine

Patricia Stoltey's Blog

Spiller Writes

Chiseled in Rock (Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers' blog)

Writing From the Peak (Pikes Peak Writers' blog)

Inkspot (Midnight Ink's authors' blog)

Under Cover of Midnight (Midnight Ink editor Terri Bischoff's blog)

Six Questions For... (interviews with editors and publishers)

Outdoor- adventure related:

River Ranger

ACA (American Canoe Association) Water Blog

And, just for fun:

Cake Wrecks