Why my MC is way cooler than me...

I hope everyone had a fantastic weekend! I'm feeling like a new girl after ridding myself of the ol' half-life gallbladder. And to make my weekend even better, I come back to the blogasphere to find I've been bequeathed the Stylish Blogger Award again, this time by Jessica LeSaicherre, Kaya Koban, and Mandie Baxter. Thank you, lovely and generous ladies!

Along with this award comes a few responsibilities.

1. Thank and link to the person(s) who nominated you.
2. Share seven random facts about yourself.
3. Pass the award along to five blogging buddies.
4. Contact those buddies to congratulate them.

I'll get to steps 3 and 4 later. First, number 2. As fate would have it, I was planning to join in Ashley Graham's fun game of: 7 things you might find interesting about my MC, so I'm changing the rules just a bit. After all, my MC is sooo much more eccentric and intriguing than me.

So here are 7 random facts about Alyssa Gardner, my heroine from SPLINTERED. And, taking a cue from Ashley, I'm adding some visual aids. ;)

1. Alyssa's been blessed, or cursed, with the power to talk to bugs and hear their whispers, the very thing that sent her mother to the asylum. So to keep herself from going crazy, she does the only thing she can to silence them: capture and smother them in bug traps. But, being a frugal and artistic gal, she doesn't waste the corpses ... she preserves them and uses them in her mosaics. Needless to say, the girl's not squeamish.

2. Since Alyssa can hear bugs, she can also hear them scream when captured by a cat or dog and chomped to death. So, in place of a traditional domestic pet, she opts for eels. In her words:  "They’re elegant and mystical, and use a shock organ to stun their prey. It’s a quiet and dignified death, like the bugs dying by asphyxiation in my traps." Oh, and their names are  Aphrodite and Adonis. Romantic, right? *shudder*

3. Alyssa's father is frugal, too. He bought her a used Gremlin for her sixteenth birthday and named it Gizmo after the cute little creature from the eighties movie (which he took Al's mother to on their first date).

https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMC_Gremlin

4. For exercise, Alyssa likes to skateboard, but she has a deathly fear of heights. She's always trying to get up the nerve for stunts, but her phobia keeps holding her back.

 5. Speaking of phobias, Alyssa has another debilitating one: the fear of being constrained. This formed early in her childhood, after seeing her mother bound in straitjackets and drugged out of her mind.

6. Alyssa won't leave the house without wearing a pair of fingerless gloves. It's more than a fashion statement. She has scars on her palms that she wants to keep hidden. The way they came about is too weird and humiliating to share with anyone, especially her friends.

7. Though Alyssa's heart belongs to her best friend and secret crush Jebediah, she is inexplicably drawn to the hero from the 90's movie The Crow. Sometimes when she's looking at the poster, the hero seems familiar somehow, like he's the only one who really understands her. Her words: "The emo guy looks back at me, his eyes bleeding black tears like he knows my pain, intimately. Something about him comforts me and I have a weird longing to be in his arms—wrapped up in leather." Well, you know what they say about being careful what you wish for, Luv. 

  

Okay, so that's some of what makes Alyssa tick (thank you Ashley for the excellent idea!).

Moving on to steps 3 and 4 ...

I bequeath the Stylish Blogger Award to four of my pals from LiveJournal, ye old blogging haunt, and to one of our fellow bloggers here on blogspot:

1. Beth Cato

2. Pat Esden

3.Stephanie Denise Brown

4. Terri Coppersmith

5.Tina Moss

Congrats, nominees! By now I've contacted you. I hope you enjoy the award. You earned it! 

And to everyone else, have a wonderful Monday. :)

Award winners: In case you're techno-challenged like me, you can post your award on your blog, just right click on the picture here and "save picture as." If you're on blogger, from your dashboard go into 'design' and 'add a gadget' and download the picture. I'm not sure what the process is for LJ; might take some investigating. ;)