The Liebster Award, Spreading the Love, & Wimping Out on my Fellow Bloggers

In the past week, I have received incredibly kind messages from two fellow writers about being Western women in Asia in love with local men. Both Susan Blumberg-Kason, author of the forthcoming I-can’t-wait-for-it-memoir The Good Chinese Wife, and “R,” a savvy Austrian who lives in Shenzen, China, and writes the provocative blog China Elevator Stories, emailed to let me know they had nominated me for The Liebster Award.

I’d never heard of this award, but Susan and R told me it’s meant to celebrate new blogs, preferably those with less than 200 subscribers. (I’m eligible!) As R explains on her blog,

The Liebster Award is kind of a pay-it-forward blogger award.  The rules are:  If you receive one you must answer the 11 questions asked by the blogger who awarded it to you, list 11 random facts about yourself, and then come up with your own 11 questions for the 11 bloggers you choose to bestow the award upon.

So, my mea culpa: As those of you who are kind enough to follow me know, I’m not the world’s best blogger. I have until early January to hand my book manuscript, upon which this blog is supposed to be based, into my editor, and I’ve been unable to balance both the book and the blog very well. And, since the book came with an advance I have to give back if I fail to hand it in on time…

So while I’m wimping out on fulfilling all the steps to receive the award, I still want to show my gratitude to Susan and R, so I’m hoping this blog post will help in some small way return the favor they’ve given to me by driving any traffic I can back to their sites–especially since they are both much better than posting new content than I have been lately!

So once again, thanks, thanks, thanks, to both Susan Blumberg-Kason and R of China Elevator Stories!

In gratitude and admiration to both of you,

Tracy