Hi. So I’ve been nominated for this Liebster Award by both Julia Witmer (https://juliawitmerblog.wordpress.com/2021/02/19/the-liebster-award/) and EG Bella (https://egbella.com/2021/02/05/the-liebster-award/) (thanks, and sorry for being so late). I’ll be answering both their questions (as well as I can; some of the answers aren’t real answers), but I will only be giving out one new set of questions (that, and finding nominees that fit, is what I really struggle with). Thanks to both of you, and let’s get to Bella’s questions first, since she nominated me first, and why this has taken me so long! My apologies on that count.

The rules:

Thank the blogger who nominated you.

Answer the eleven questions he/she asked

Nominate eleven more bloggers for the award. Make sure they know you nominated them.

And ask your eleven nominated bloggers eleven questions

1. When did you first get the idea to start a blog, and why did you decide to?

A couple years ago. I’d been writing an occasional essay for the purpose of explain

ing my thoughts to friends, and I’d just made a Twitter account (Twitter.com/rainanightinga1). I thought it might be a good idea to post my essays (often somewhat altered) to my blog, and link to them from my Twitter account. After all, in depth explanations are difficult there! From there, it has grown into what it is now, with a blog that consists largely of religious and philosophical essays, but an occasional book-related post, and then a page with lots of information and links to other pages with more information about my novels and worlds.

2. What is your dream job?

The one I have in dreams? Hmm. I’m not really sure. The one I wish I could have? That gets horribly complicated. In this world, as it is? Or in the world that I wish this one was? In this world as it is, I want to tell people that God is good and there is no reason to be afraid! But is that a job? On another level, I’d like to help people enjoy the world and the beautiful things God has given us – animals and trees and sunsets. And, of course, I write. I want to share the good I see through stories. I feel like that’s the way I think best myself, and so it’s probably the way I communicate best, too. But there’s lots of things that would be great to do, other than sit and write, too – in fact, how could one write well if one isn’t at least interested in getting know the world, the mountains and trees and flowers and streams and animals and volcanoes and storms and so forth, even if doing so isn’t feasible?

3. If you could domesticate any wild animal to keep for a pet, which would you choose and why?

An elephant, maybe? They’re smart, they seem kind, and they live for a long time – oftentimes, longer even than we do. It would be cool to make friends with an elephant.

4. Chocolate or vanilla (or other)?

Boring question. Whatever (though there are some things people have come up with that I’m sure I don’t like). I’m not that prone to favourites, though.

5. What’s the next book you hope to read and/or movie you want to watch?

Maybe The Mirror of Simple Souls by Marguerite Porete. But you never really know what a book is like until you read it. I did just read The Treekeepers by Susan Britton, though, and it is very good. It’s a children’s novel, but it’s suitable to all ages. Unfortunately, it is out of print, so it may be a little difficult to get print copies, but you can get the ebook from Barnes and Noble https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-treekeepers-susan-britton/1005616207?ean=2940015723779 . I would write a review about it, but I feel like the better a book is, the harder it is to write a good review about it – for me, that is.

6. What fictional world do you wish was real?

None of them? For one, it might not look at all like the fictional worlds, but I’m sure all that’s good and beautiful is fiction is true and better somewhere in reality. Unless the good of it is in being the fiction, in which case it’s good for it to be a fictional world and not a real one! But enough for that. I think that if you’re wishing that a fictional world was real, there’s a lot you haven’t noticed about the real one! I think it’s more magical than any of us have yet discovered and… if you’re really yearning to go on a heroic adventure that might kill you to defeat a terrible evil that’s threatening the world or something you love… we ll, I’m pretty sure those evils exist in the real world, and that if you want to go on such an adventure or quest that might be an option.

7. In three words, how would you best describe yourself?

Really, anything I say here is going to be really bland, and at the moment I can’t think of anything good/descriptive. Believer-of-Goodness is the best I can come up with at the moment. I am very bad at these sort of questions, but that does at least convey something very important and solid about me!

8. If you had to pick one season to live in for the rest of your life, which one would you pick?

That would really be horrible! How would it even work?! No, I want all the seasons. No season is itself without the rest of them. That said, I think Spring is really beautiful. I really like flowers, and I like rain and flowing water and green things sprouting up and growing everywhere (not sure I’d want to live in a tropical rainforest, though).

9. What’s one of your favorite quotes (about anything)?

I tend to like stories more than quotes! But I’ll try to think of something. Here’s a few I actually looked up to find them since I am so poor at favorites! There’s lots of quotes I like, but they are so many that I often don’t think of any at the mention of favorite quotes – also, since stories and sometimes poetry, not quotes are my favorites, well… Anyway, here are a few I like.

“I have never made a sacrifice in my life” – Hudson Tayler, missionary to China

“In all this I saw no sin, for I believe that sin has no part in being nor manner of substance” – Julian of Norwich

“God rejoices to be our Father, God rejoices to be our Mother, Jesus rejoices to be our savior” – Julian of Norwich

10. Who is a fiction character you think you’d get along well with? Who is one you don’t think you’d get along with?

Well, one never really knows until one meets someone how well one will or won’t get along with him or her – and, another thing, fiction characters, no matter how realistic their authors make them or how real they are in their authors’ head, aren’t real like real people, with as much breadth as real people do, with all the innumerable, unmentionable quirks and personality traits any real person has, so this makes it really hard to think about. Also, under what circumstances? I dare say there are people who might enjoy sitting under a tree together and watching the sun, or playing a game of hide-and-seek, but who would really irritate each other trying to find their way down a slippery, ice-and-snow-covered mountain in the middle of the night with orcs and gargoyles hunting them. I daresay under most circumstances I and my own character, Tara-lin (Children of the Dryads, Legend of the Singer Book One), would probably be able to tolerate each other, though. I doubt I and another of my own characters, Arendellie (The Three Scrolls, Kaarathlon Series), would practically ever enjoy each other’s company.

11. What’s one of your favorite childhood memories?

Probably playing with my parents.

All right. Now for Julia’s questions.

1. What is one of your favorite books?

Well, The Treekeepers, which I mentioned in EG Bella’s questions, is definitely a favorite. I

also really liked The Last Herald-Mage Trilogy (Magic’s Pawn, Magic’s Promise, Magic’s Price). The author is definitely not Christian, but her view of death is so much more Christian than what I see almost everywhere.

2. What is your favorite thing about your blog, specifically?

Hmm. That I write for it when I feel like it, and I post when I want to, despite the fact that that can get woefully sporadic. Also, I really like the name of it. Enthralled By Love. That’s what I want my life to be. That’s what I want the world – everyone and everything else – to be. That’s what I hope it’s about.

3. How did you first get into blogging?

Well, I’d write essays and snippets either just to get my thoughts down on paper or to share with people. Then, when I started my twitter account (@RainaNightinga1 – though if you’re almost solely interested in the novels aspect, the newer @Areaer_Novels might be the one for you) I thought that the tweets were short, but people might take an interest in my thoughts put down in a larger, more complete way.

4. What would be your ideal working environment for blogging/writing?

A place where I can write, obviously a frame of mind in which I both have something to write and have the faculties to write it. Other than that, I don’t know.

5. What’s one of your favorite foods?

What is it with all these boring questions? At least, and I should thank Julia for this, she asked about what’s one of your favorite foods, not what’s your favorite food. Anyway, I like many kinds of fruit.

6. What’s your proudest achievement?

I have no idea. I probably have none. I don’t keep a record-list. What would a proudest achievement even be? That would be for God to judge, but I have I feel He doesn’t judge that way, either. It’s less achievement and more being to Him. Really, I have no idea. I mean, there are things I enjoy doing, things that have given me thrills of delight, but, as I said, I don’t keep a record or list of them, so I don’t have a clue where they rank. And, as I once wrote in one of the essays on my blog, experiences are so unique. Who could judge them? The greatest joy or pain or sorrow or delight is always, or almost always, the one we’re experiencing right now, or at least that’s held mostly true in my experience.

7. How do you motivate yourself to keep your blog up and running?

It appears that I have not been. I have probably a dozen essays I want to write, some of them half-started, but I can’t pull them together and write them, and so it’s mostly sitting.

8. What’s your favorite thing to write about?

The love of God, and I write about it in half a dozen, or maybe half a hundred, or maybe two hundred different ways. When it comes to style/genre, I really enjoy writing characters.

9. What’s your least favorite thing to write about?

Almost certainly something I don’t write about, and so how would I know? I suppose scenes where I have to dance around with writing the scene in order to give the reader the emotional feel and all the pertinent informations without ever even having to visualize myself any of the gory details or torture mechanisms involved … well, figuring out how to do that is probably not my favorite thing to do, though, if I had favorite scenes, some of those scenes might make into, or even very high up, the list of favorites (lots of things would make it very high up the list of favorites for me – after all, the list is wholly theoretical, since I very rarely have anything that half-way qualifies as a favorite; only things I like so much I can’t even begin to say it). Also, actually visualizing the details would be an even less favorite thing to do, and writing the details would be an equal un-favorite thing to write about, so … my least favorite things to write about are definitely things I don’t write about, but there’s probably things I would hate writing about even more, that I’ve never even thought of writing about.

10. What’s something you were obsessed with as a kid? (i.e. horses, reading, a certain movie, etc.)

Given the line of thinking that was going on answering the last question … martyrs. I lived through rather a long period of wondering how and why the martyrs were motivated, what was the source of their joy and confidence. Oh yes, and making sure I never found out the details of their deaths any farther than, “So-and-so was beheaded,” or maybe, “So-and-so was beaten to death.” After all, I’d learned about those quite early, and as unamusing as even those are, I really couldn’t hope to avoid bits of information as that. Now, how someone was beaten to death … that might be something I do not ever want to learn (and even if it is to happen to me, I have a feeling it won’t be any worse for not having learned of it ahead of time).

To answer the question more properly … dragons, and I’m still fairly obsessed with dragons. The kind that form deep, empathic relationships. But anyone who reads my novels will soon discovered that, though there’s a way in which I will always love someone else’s dragons.

11. Do you still like the thing you were obsessed with as a kid?

Seems I already answered this one. Unless someone wants to know if I still like martyrs – or is it martyrdom? As for the first, they’re people. I probably would like some of them. Others of them probably have personalities that may mean we’ll have to be in Heaven to be best friends the way it’s easy for some people to be here on earth. Then again, I may like a few here and now. Who knows which of us will be awarded that crown? As for martyrdom, like is hardly a sufficient word if one is talking about the glory of the Spirit and the vision of the face of Christ at the right hand of the throne of the Father, even so much of it as I have glimpsed, and … no, words fail. I will say no more.

My questions:

1. What’s something you enjoy about blogging?

2. How do you feel about rain and/or snow?

3. What’s a theme you really enjoy in other people’s writing? Feel free to share more than one.

4. What’s a theme you find recurs in your own writing? Feel free to share more than one.

5. What’s a style or genre of writing you like, and something about why you like it? (This could be anything from prose/poetry/story to Young Adult Historical Fiction or Middle Grade Fantasy or Religious Devotions, etc)

6. Is there something in nature that seems or is dangerous, but that you enjoy in some way?

7. Is there something in nature that is not generally considered dangerous that you really enjoy?

8. Is there something that’s really common or even necessary for life that absolutely has you in awe and holds your wonder or that you really, desperately, enjoy?

9. Is there a myth (I’m using this word loosely; Christian ‘myths’ count) that you really like? Can you tell us something about why or how it draws your attention?

10. Is there a mythical creature that you really like?

11. How do you feel about night and/or day?

Nominees:

1. Tina Wanis (howtowritecoptic.wordpress.com)

2. Mikayla (truthfulstoryteller.wordpress.com)

3. Julieanneriddle (agirlandhergod.blog)

4. Strength of His Might (strengthofhismight.wordpress.com)

And anyone else. I’m supposed to choose 11, but I’ve spent too long on this and not come up with anyone else I know who I expect would be interested. By the way, my apologies if the formatting is terrible. I’ve never used the new Block Editor before, and I hate it, but I can’t find the Classic one right now. It looks like WordPress Admin isn’t available anymore, so if anyone knows how to get back into that, my sincere thanks!