Happy Monday, January, and New Year! Whew. 2025 has already been eventful! In my family, that meant husband and eldest with sinus infections during the second week of the month (which actually was the first full week of January). Me and youngest had sinus infections in December. And then the news of the fires in California, which is so sad. I've been praying for all in the path and dealing with the fires, etc. Hopefully firefighters are able to contain/put them out soon. The first few days of 2025 weren't too bad, but then things got a little crazy. I'm hoping the rest of the month is calmer, healthier, and happier. Writer's Life Updates: I still have some queries out on Sugar & Frost that are awaiting answers. In the interim, I'm working on some other stories (every author has files with unfinished manuscripts and I'm definitely no different in that respect!) Christmas and New Year's: My Christmas was fairly quiet since I was getting over a sinus ...

Happy December! We're nearly halfway through December and I just realized I hadn't put up a blog post for this month. OOPS! But, to be fair, I've had plenty going on. Personally: We are still minus a Christmas tree. No, we haven't gotten it up, yet. But I'm hoping this weekend it will happen! We don't usually take this long, but we've had some things going on. One of those things was that we had to replace our washing machine. Our previous one decided that it had enough of our household and no, thank you it would not work properly any longer. Poor thing limped along until it wouldn't drain out the water in the clothes (I had to squeeze them the best I could and pop them in the dryer for longer). But that's at an end since we now have a brand new washer, which we've had for about a week and it's doing okay so far. Not long ago, Averie Cat (that's his social media nickname) had some health issues that made me quite concerned about him. Fo...

  Happy January, 2024, and Friday! If December snuck up on me, January just blew right in without me being ready to be done with December. Christmas cards got mailed Wednesday (as in January 3, 2024!) Yeah, I was that behind. But I think my close friends and my family members are a forgiving bunch and won't mind getting their Christmas cards a little late. My Christmas was fairly nice. I had a sparkly red dress this year (see my Instagram for a photo). I love sparkles. I don't always wear them, but I do like them. I did refrain from purchasing glittery eyeshadow for Mass (Catholic Christian Church Service). A little sparkle at Mass is okay, but I don't need to be attention-grabbing there. Later in the week we ate Christmas dinner at my sister's house (no, not on Christmas Day because we were waiting for one my brothers and his family to arrive in town and they couldn't get in any earlier because of their responsibilities at home). The weekend of New Year's my el...

  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 Wednesday & Happy December! I hope December 2021 finds all of you well. I can't believe we're already nearing the end of 2021. It feels like the year just started yesterday or something. Who participated in NaNoWriMo2021? I didn't. I don't really do NaNo, but I fully support those who do. If you did participate, I wish you a great word count! If NaNoWriMo something that works for you as an author and/or you enjoy it, then I say go for it! I know people who do Camp NaNoWriMo or other NaNo-like events and they say they actually help them with their writing. Every author is different, so you have to find a process/technique that works for you. I'm working on getting into the Christmas spirit. We're in the process of putting up the tree (have to fix something on the lights so the ornaments aren't on there, yet). I've been playing Christmas Carols and I've almost completed my Christmas shopping. My biggest concern with the cooler weather isn...

Happy Monday! Can you believe that next week is Christmas? I thought it would take longer to get here. I finished my Christmas shopping last week. Have you finished? The Averie Household has been slow about getting the tree up this year. The evening of December 13th, my Real Life Hero brought the box in. Slower than what we usually do, but things have been a bit crazy the last couple of weeks. Despite being slow about the tree, we've been anticipating Christmas. The Offspring are excited and we've been to one Christmas party and Real Life Hero has one coming up at his work. In the car we've been playing Christmas music, which has been fun. Working on some more projects under my Jeannie Averie pseudonym, but I'm thinking up things for the last two books in the Immortal Dreams series. Averie Cat had his yearly check up and he's in good health. Got his shot he needed and we're now all set. He didn't enjoy the whole thing, but at least he's health...

Happy Tuesday Everyone, The last time I posted was in November. That's pretty bad, but getting to post a blog is tough. Blog posts take a lot of time because I have to think of a topic, write it up, edit it, add graphics/pictures, and make sure any relevant links are set up. I'm thinking that I will go to once a week or once every other week for blog posts. Also, apparently there are some kind of European laws and Blogger is posting Cookie notices, but I don't know where they are and I don't know if they're showing up, so if they are, please let me know where to look because the directions weren't clear. Christmas in the Averie Household was eventful. On Christmas Eve we went to Mass and the Averie Offspring was rather rambunctious much to me and Mr. Averie's chagrin. I'm chalking it up to the excitement of the season, but despite the goofiness on the part of my offspring, it was a lovely service and we sang one of my favorite Christmas hymns ( Jo...

Happy Wednesday All, We're almost done with August, in fact, September starts tomorrow. Writers have until September 23rd to register for the Northwest Houston RWA Lone Star Writer's Conference . All writers, of all genres are welcome. We open up the conference to all writers of all genres, so take advantage of that. Morning Speaker will be NY Times Bestseller, Kerrelyn Sparks. The afternoon speaker is going to be Sandra Beckwith from Buildbookbuzz.com. We'll have raffle baskets to raffle off, there will be pitch sessions going on, and more.  Some writers have said they couldn't make this year. Very well, if you, a writer, can't make it this year, then put us down for next year. Generally we have the Conference the first Saturday in October. That's the date it's been ever since I started going to the conference back in 2009. So see, the time of year hasn't changed, just when the first Saturday of October is changes (some years it's not the 1st ...

Happy New Year Darling Readers, I hope you all had a very Merry Christmas and a wonderful New Year's. The Averie Household continues to be busy. I'm still working on getting Immortal Love ready to turn into my publisher (although, getting closer--thank goodness!) Christmas was nice. We went to Church for the vigil on Christmas Eve, and enjoyed the rest of the evening as a family. The next day presents were opened and we headed for my parents' house for more presents and Christmas dinner. My father made gluten free chocolate chip cookies and a gluten free apple pie (thank you, dad!) which were both really good. The ham was awesome, too (I can't eat turkey, I'm allergic to it, so Dad had turkey and ham--yes, he loves me!) We hung out with some friends of my folks and family members. The next day (Friday), one of my brothers made it into town and we saw them Saturday for dinner. Sunday we relaxed at home. This week has been mostly hanging out at home, but bu...

Happy Friday All, This week has been filled with appointments pretty much every day so I've been kept on my toes. With Christmas on its way and the end of the year coming, I thought I'd give a look at some of my favorite novels that were released in 2014 (besides my own, of course LOL). In no particular order, here are some of my favorite novels published in 2014: YA Category: CC Hunter's Eternal   This is book number 2 in C.C.'s Shadow Falls After Dark series, featuring vampire Della Tsang. I love how underneath all her prickles and walls, Della feels deeply and is an incredibly loyal person. She's strong, sassy, but also vulnerable. I recommend reading C.C.'s Shadow Falls series, first, before reading Della's stories because these books happen after the events in the first novels. Of course, I recommend reading any of C.C.'s novels! She's an incredibly talented author. To check out my official blog book review of this novel, click h...

Happy Tuesday Everybody, I hope you all enjoyed yesterday's post with the guest authors . It was fun to talk about the TV show Once Upon A Time like that. Maybe I'll do something similar with another subject some other time. It's now December! Can you believe it? Despite what I said on Facebook about getting the tree up on Sunday it didn't happen. I was distracted by all the edits I had to do and Husband got wrapped One of my favorite ornaments It represents Monroe, from my novel, ALL'S FAIR IN LOVE & LION up in some activities he and the offspring got into. However, I hope we'll be able to follow through on what Husband said about getting it up this evening. It just doesn't feel Christmassy without the decorations out. I'm still working on my personal edits of Book Three of the Immortal Dreams Trilogy. I've finished the initial read-through and am doing some other edits before it goes to critiques. Then I'll go through the e...

Happy Monday All, I hope everyone had a wonderful and very Merry Christmas! We sure did. Christmas Eve we attended church and then came back and relaxed a while before friends of ours came over for a brief visit.  On Christmas Day, we slept in, (yes, Offspring does sleep in from time to time--which is lovely, especially when didn't have to get up early!) We got up, Offspring and I ate breakfast, then we opened gifts (Husband opted to wait until after gifts to eat breakfast because he was going to have oatmeal and he said that took him a while to eat, and Offspring was going crazy wanting to open gifts LOL). We spent the rest of the day just relaxing. Offspring and husband played in the backyard--I went out there for a while. I spent most of the day reading one of my new books, Katie McGarry's Crash Into You (She writes contemporary/romantic YA novels. I've enjoyed everything she's published so far). Husband had to work the next day. I was supposed to be...

Happy Monday One and All, The Averie Household is in full Christmas gear-up mode. We've finished Christmas present shopping. The outside lights are up (sorry, I don't have pictures right now.  Our camera needs its batteries replaced and we ran out of the kind it uses. But once we get the batteries, I'll go out and see if I can get some pictures of them. We don't have a lot out).  Our tree has been up for a while, which has been fun--although the lights don't work on it, so next year husband has said he's going to put lights on it. Good thing we have some extra lights...hopefully we have enough. Have to find that out. I've been enjoying The Florin Street Band's newest video/song, Winter Wonder .  I don't know how many of you remember their first song, My Favorite Time Of Year , but I loved it. It was an effort put together by Leigh Haggerwood , a singer/songwriter. He got a bunch of musicians and singers together and they dressed in Victorian era...