Mary from Ocean Owl nominated this blog for Blog of the Year. 😀 As you can see by the icon below, I have accepted the nomination.

Here are the rules of acceptance as per Mary’s nomination post:

1. Display the award logo on your blog.
2. Link back to the person who nominated you.
3. Link back to the Blog of the Year 2012 Rules page so people can read the real, complete, and fully accurate rules of this slightly-different blogger award.
4. State 5 things about yourself.
5. Pass the award on to 6 other bloggers and link to one of their specific posts so that they get notified by pingback.

First, 5 things about me.

1. I’ve started writing the rough draft of Thalia’s Musings 3 and am about 2000 words into the second chapter.

2. My Christmas tree is still up. That may or may not change by the end of this week.

3. My current Netflix addiction is the Canadian urban fantasy drama Lost Girl.

4. When people tell me they’ve never watched any Star Trek, I think, “Do you hate fun?”

5. I was called Amy for short while I was growing up. I didn’t like it until Amy Farrah Fowler and Amy Pond made me change my mind.

Now for the nominees.

There isn’t anything in the rules about who you can nominate, so I made up my own criteria. First, I divided the blogs I usually read into six categories and picked a nominee for each one. Second, I limited my choices to small indie blogs. That’s why you won’t see big commercial operations like the Offbeat Empire blogs or anyone from Patheos on here, even though those are some of my favorites. So here you have it: my weird eclectic list of indie bloggers whose writings I have loved in 2012.

1. Author Blog – Musings of Melpomene

You know I write a webseries called Thalia’s Musings, right? If you haven’t read it yet, go read it. If you really love me, go buy it. Anyway, I have recently found my long lost Muse sister. Melpomene Selemidis is the author of the upcoming novel Sirens of Santorini. She posts original poetry, short stories, reviews, and other musings on her blog.

2. Patriarchy Recovery Blog – Sarah Over the Moon

You may not be aware that this genre exists. If that’s the case, I’m happy for you. How do I explain this? Once upon a time, a handful of religious people decided to raise their children in a parallel universe that looked like what would happen if the Amish, the Taliban, and the ancient Roman Stoics were stranded together on a desert island. This movement was called Christian Patriarchy, or Biblical Patriarchy if the term “Christian” was too tainted by the world for your tastes. Somewhere along the line, some of the children raised in this parallel universe figured out “Hey, this is nuts” and escaped to the real world. Some of the parents did the same. From the real world, they began to blog about their misadventures in the parallel universe in hopes of helping others escape, encouraging their fellow expatriates, and warning normal Christians that the parallel universe was not the utopia its leaders claimed.

Seriously, there are tons of these blogs. This is the category I had the hardest time narrowing down. I ultimately picked Sarah Moon’s blog because hers is the one that most frequently makes me think, “Man, I could’ve written this.” Her experiences aren’t identical to mine, but her approach to those experiences is one with which I strongly identify.

3. LGBTQ Blog – A Queer P@th

You can never have too many gay Mennonite bloggers on your blog roll. You just can’t. And I’ve got to say, Cbus Queer’s blog is the best blog by an openly gay Mennonite that I have ever read in my life. I can almost guarantee that you’ll say the same.

4. Mommy Blog – Counting Chickens/Butch…and Pregnant

Yeah, I read mommy blogs. Now you know my guiltiest of guilty pleasures. What I find most interesting about this pair of blogs is not that they’re written by a same-sex couple. It’s not even the fact that the butch partner was the one who had the baby. It’s the fact that, regardless of gender, it’s fascinating to watch Meridith and her anonymous wife blog about the same relationship, same family, and same child.

5. Random Geekery Blog – Marie Erving 

Marie’s self-titled blog has a little bit of everything. She reviews old and new sci fi and fantasy works in every medium. Thalia’s Musings has joined Firefly, The Hunger Games, The Guild, and Fullmetal Alchemist on the list of works Marie has written about. This year she’s added a series I’m particularly enjoying: an inside look at what it’s like to work in a science lab. It’s very accessible to people like me, i.e. geeky laymen who love the concept of science but have never formally studied any scientific field.

6. Fashion/Style Blog – Sublimefemme Unbound

There’s femme and then there’s high femme. Femme looks like you stepped out of the pages of InStyle. High femme looks like you stepped out of Old Hollywood. Or a cabaret. Or a drag show. Or an Etsy store. It’s an over-the-top, glamazon, theatrical take on femininity. It’s wearing glittery eyeliner to the grocery store or sequins to church. Sublimefemme blogs about high femme fashion in a way that’s accessible to people of any race, gender, shape, or size.

What are some of your favorite blogs and blog posts of 2012? Tell us in the comments, or nominate some on your own blog!