Happy December, Well, it's already almost the last day of December...and the whole month totally snuck up on me and slipped by me without me realizing what was going on until Christmas Weekend! I kept thinking "Oh, I've got time to do..." and whatever. HA! Next time, I'm going to REALLY look at my calendar and go "Wait, NO, I DON'T have all this time!" Exhibit A: I need to finish putting together (and mail) Christmas cards. Yep. I'm late, I know, but hopefully I'll get them out during the 12 days of Christmas (before the celebration of Jesus' Baptism, which is celebrated the Sunday after Epiphany. Catholics don't do celebrations halfway! Case in point: Easter has many, many days in the Easter Season). Exhibit B: I was wrapping presents on Christmas Eve. I'm usually done days before then. So all of you out there who were behind this year...I get it! Things happen. Life can be nuts. This whole year felt fast, though. I know I kept...

  Happy November Everyone! I still feel like the year has been going by quickly. I blinked and it's the end of November. Maybe I need to stop blinking? This month has been busy! Between family and personal stuff and working on some manuscripts, I'm not sure where to begin. Averie Cat got his yearly shot, nails clipped, and flea treatment all at his exam (but he's forgiven me for the indignity of going to the vet and being in his carrier).  I don't have much that I feel like sharing from this month, not that it was so bad, but I'm pretty private about my personal life. For those who are finishing up NaNoWriMo * 2023, I hope you've had great success with it! I don't do NaNo but I do like to cheer on those who do, which I've done this year on X(Twitter). I keep thinking I'll write a really good blog post. Maybe in December...hopefully I'll have a lot of great things to report on for that month! That would be awesome. :-) I hope all my fellow USA ci...

  Happy End-Of-October! I'm a bit late posting for the month, but at least I'm getting it in before it ends! We've had some days of mild temperatures with beautiful sunshine, and a bit of a breeze. A lovely change from 90-100 degree Fahrenheit that we had in August and September. We did get some rain, which is good. I've done a bit of writing this month--not a ton, but at least it's making progress and I think the manuscript I've been mostly working on will be fun story when it's written. (There are already fun aspects to it, as far as I'm concerned!) September feels a bit of a blur of sorting through emotions on some things I've had to deal with and family responsibilities. But October has been better. Sometimes things happen and you just have to keep holding onto hope (my faith as a Catholic Christian helps me tremendously with that). I celebrated my birthday, my dad's, and sent birthday wishes to other family members whose birthdays fall in Oc...

  Happy Friday Everyone! It's September...! Is it just me, or does this year feel like it's going by fast? Schools are back in session. Texas hasn't gotten the menu that it's getting into the Fall months. But that's nothing new when it comes to September in my part of Texas. I've got four family members with birthdays--a joyful thing for sure. Buddy Holly was born on September 7th (and I enjoy several of his songs). My deceased friend, Sarah's, birthday is on September 16th. After working so intensely on revisions on one of my manuscripts, I've been reacquainting myself with the WIPs (Works In Progress) that I haven't as yet finished writing. It's been interesting...I like them a lot more now than I did even when I started writing them! My long-time critique partner is working on some stories she hopes to release--I got a chance to read one of them. I hope readers will enjoy it. She's a very talented writer. Not much else to report on so far,...

  Happy August Everyone! My August started off with a road trip to Lubbock, Texas. My Real Life Hero (aka my husband) did the driving. My offspring hung out in the backseat, while I had the front passenger chair. I've got some family in Lubbock, plus I've wanted to go where the innovative singer/songwriter/musician, Buddy Holly was from. My fandom of Buddy Holly-(Buddy Holly & The Crickets) (Buddy Holly was inducted into The Rock N' Roll Hall of Fame in 1986 ) started when I was probably either in high school or my early twenties (I can't remember exactly). I went with my parents (and maybe my younger brother) to see The Buddy Holly Story , a musical about Holly's life. Later, I got a copy of the musical, and Paul McCartney's The Real Buddy Holly Story . A family member of mine moved to Lubbock some years back. I vowed to one day get out there to see my family member's house, and get over to The Buddy Holly Center. I would've gone last autumn, except...

  Happy Thursday Everyone! June is already over? I was completely unprepared for that. In fact, I feel like this year is flying by. (I was late sending birthday card to a friend who had a birthday near the end of June...normally I'm better about these things, but it snuck up on me!) Updates: June was full of working on revisions. At the moment, I don't want to go into detail...if something fun happens with this, I'll update y'all. For now, pray for me. :-) And if you don't pray, at least wish me well, please? Thanks. Writing: I haven't been working on my other WIPs because I was doing revisions. I've got some notes back on some chapters for revisions from my long-time critique partner, so I'm going to be working on those on Friday. I do plan on working on one of my WIPs, though. My CP (Critique partner) likes this WIP in particular. Reading: Yes, I've been doing some reading. I've really liked this one Beauty And The Beast retelling. It's ca...

  Happy Tuesday All, Wow...I can't believe I actually forgot to post on here in May. In my defense, I thought I had, but when I came to post a June entry I realized I had missed May! In May, my husband and I celebrated our anniversary. We've been married for well over 10 years! :-) We didn't do anything big...but we did get take out from Chili's, which was good. My husband is my Real Life Hero. The man has seen me at my best and my worst and STILL loves me, so I'd say he's a keeper. My wedding was lovely. I felt like a princess (which is cool, since my Dad sometimes calls me "princess"). We had a blast at our reception and a wonderful honeymoon on St. Croix (US Virgin Islands). This June my parents will celebrate 57 years of marriage. I'm so happy for them! In terms of writing...I've turned a bit of a corner so to speak. I had a brainstorming session with my long-time critique partner, author Tess St. John , which helped one of my manuscripts q...

  Happy Tuesday All, Can you believe April is already almost over? I think it went by way faster than I expected. One thing that has been interesting about this particular April is the variety of weather we've had. Everything from jackets to shorts. No snow, but that's just fine with me! After "Snowmeggeddon" (what was that, about 3 or 4 years ago?) I'm good. I don't need any snow here. Yes, I'm still writing. I have several what I term "active" projects, meaning they're the main manuscripts I'm working on. I also have a sort of "side-ish" project, which has to do with my Immortal Dreams series, but I don't foresee it ever published (at least, not anytime soon). For those who have read the other books, this would be Nic and Sirena's story. I hinted a bit at it in Perfect Love . The Immortal Dreams books are no longer available (I have my rights back; any of them you find for sale aren't from me or my previous publis...

  Good Evening/Late Evening Everyone! It's after 9 pm my time on March 31, 2023, and I just realized I never posted any post for March! I'm sorry I neglected to do this. I hope everyone's March was good--mine was busy!  Recently I started doing some critique for a fellow author. I can't give details or a name or anything, but this author's work intrigued me. I've been having a blast! It's really been and honor and privilege to do this for the author. This author has some interesting ideas. *Cue Smiley Face Emoji* Not much to report on The Author Encounter front right now. I'll do so when I can. Still waiting on some agent responses to the novel I'm query. (I don't like to publicly give details on query stats, sorry, not my style). Oh and yes, I've been doing some writing, too! But you know I don't say much about what I'm working on--but I do have a holidayish-themed WIP. Normally I don't do very well with writing holiday-themed no...

  Happy Friday! We're nearing the end of February, if you can believe it! Sometimes I think this year is going by fast. February is a mixed bag of emotions for me. Early February marks my eldest's birthday, which is a good thing. One of my siblings has a wedding anniversary. Another good thing. Two family members (a sibling and a cousin) have birthdays. (I think other relatives have birthdays this month, too, but I can't remember). Some friends have birthdays. More good things. Unfortunately, my friend, Sarah's death anniversary is also in February. So, while I like Valentine's Day okay, and I'm totally on board with celebrating birthdays and anniversaries, always in the back of my head is February 20th. That's the day Sarah died. This year marked 10 years, which felt big. I couldn't figure out why it felt big, but one of my counselors said "It IS a big one." Leading up to February 20, 2023, I did have several bouts of tears. But none on the ac...

  Happy January (about 30 days late)! Happy New Year! Can you believe it's a brand-new year, and 2023? So much happened last year. Some good, some hard, some not-so-good. I often get a mixed bag; although, some of it I hope never happens again. Good and bad often happen every year, though. January has been busy. Family stuff, mostly. Nothing bad, just as I said, busy. My eldest is getting older and had an overnight trip. I was a worried Mama, but Eldest was fine, of course. Eldest had fun at this camp for 2 nights. It was weird having Eldest gone for longer than a night, but I reminded myself that one day Eldest would become an adult and be out there in the world doing whatever Eldest decides to do with life. Kinda a spooky thought, all things considered, but parents do have to help their offspring grow up. I'm querying one of my manuscripts and have about 4-5 WIPs in various stages of being written. There are about 2-3 main ones that I'm focusing most of my attention on at...