Yesterday, I stumbled onto my “About” page and found out that one of our own, thoughtofvg, gifted me the Liebster Blog Award.

The award gets passed on to excelled bloggers with fewer than 200 followers to recognize their efforts  to a larger audience.

Like ‘thoghtofvg’ I too love the German language (as chanonyx might tell you) so to earn an award that originated in Germany tickles my proverbial Wernicke’s area.

That sounded dirty. What I meant was, the language center of my brain is grateful.

The rules:

1. Thank your Liebster Blog Award presenter on your blog [check]
2. Link back to the blogger who awarded you (for blends of thought and poetry, check out thoughtofvg) [checker check]
3. Copy and paste the award on your blog [triple check]
4. Present Liebster to 5 blogs of 200 followers or less who you feel deserve notoriety (see below) [quadruple check]
5. Let ’em know they have been chosen by leaving a comment at their blog [quintuple check]

I follow lots of blogs, but here are five underblogs I support first with my readership, and now with the Liebster Award:

Ellie Ann Soderstrom – This girl is what I imagine my fraternal twin sister would have been like. She’s smart, fun, writes for a younger audience than I, used to be in a digital writer’s group with me, not to mention that three of her sisters and her brother-in-law have also been in writers groups with me. She enjoys random nerd crap and we get on each others nerves if we spend too much time talking about the same thing. First you have your best friend who likes all the things you like for all the same reasons in all the same ways. Then you have your next best friend who likes all the things you like, but comes at it from COMPLETELY different angles than you do. You might even call them the wrong angles, but then again, your next best friend would probably say the same thing about you. Ellie’s like that, like a great sister. And she’s probably the most cheerful, supportive lady in my life outside of my bride, my biological sister, my mother and my grandmother. I support her as much or more than any other writer friend of mine and will call out a hit on anyone who gives her crap. I know a guy. His name’s Leon.

Mark Neunschwander – When I need photos, I call this dude. We braved the trenches of Whiskerino together. I’m actually typing this from inside his studio creepily staring at him while he rearranges things on the counter so that when he reads this later, he’ll be freaked out that he didn’t notice. He’s the go-to guy for Joplin big-city photography, one of the highlights of the growing Downtown Joplin scene and a dear friend. We’re also working on a photo book for what Mark affectionately refers to as “The ‘Nader’” (a.k.a The EF5 Tornado).

Chris Travis – Met this guy randomly at a wedding in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma. He’s a church planter in Manhattan and understands a little of the tension I feel between the writer and the pastor. Unlike many shady religious writers, Chris joined an already existing writers group in New York. There he discovered the works of Patrick Rothfuss and, to my knowledge, has never turned back.

Yor Ryeter – Yor took on a rather ambitious undertaking: 10,000 pieces of writing. As I’m doing something similar, I sympathize with the struggle (I’m at 1,904 hours out of 10,000).

Lauren Schaubert – This is my biological sister, so of course I’m gonna brag on her. All those nice things I said about Ellie being my sister I say from the experience of having a PHENOMENAL little sister. Lauren’s writing very well, painting even better and thinking deeply for being a mere sophomore in high school. I’m proud to give this award finally to her newest blog Truly Naked.

Congrats everyone.