Happy Tuesday All, Once again, I'm posting the monthly post near the end of the month. But oh well. I was pretty busy during part of the beginning of the month, so I thought I'd wait until after so that I could mention some of it here. I got to hang out with 2 out of 3 of my Girls' Night Out Ladies. These ladies are my besties and I've known them a long time. We had a nice dinner out and then hung out at a coffee/sweet shop until they closed. The last time we'd all been together was in 2019. I'd seen them on and off, but not all of us together. So, that was a wonderful thing to have happen this month. #UnhingedPit -- a pitching event held on X and BlueSky happened. Authors pitch their manuscripts but in unconventional ways. The two ladies who run the event decided to make me their ambassador (it's sort of a funny story--they liked my enthusiasm when it was first developed in 2024, and after a while we got to talking and that was that). It was so much fu...

  Happy Monday! It's the last day of June and I can't believe July starts tomorrow. This month felt a bit like a whirlwind, but there were several lovely moments. June 10th marked 59 years that my parents had been married. I didn't get to see them on that day, but I did wish them a happy anniversary. They've been such a special example and inspiration for me. (One of my best friends got married on their anniversary and when I found out I said, "You know, that's my parents' anniversary?" My friend responded: "I KNEW it was a good day to get married!"). Two of my out-of-town siblings came in for a few days on Father's Day weekend and I got to see them, as well as my sibling that lives near my parents. We had a nice weekend celebrating Father's Day. Saturday early evening we were at a Mexican restaurant and then Sunday evening had barbecue at my in-town sibling's house. It was very nice. My father is not only a father, but a grandfat...

  Happy Friday and Happy March! Been busy working on a manuscript of mine and playing with some new ideas for new stories and ideas for existing unfinished manuscripts. No new updates on the querying front to report back on, yet, but hopefully some good news will come! We've now entered the season of Lent. As a Catholic, this season is a time for repentance, prayer, fasting, almsgiving, and reflection. I look at it as a time for not just repenting of sin--but really working on one's relationship with Jesus in a more intense and focused--the word 'intentional' comes to mind--way to make it a part of you rather than just something you do for Lent. Every Christian has their own approach Lent, and since I'm no Theologian, I won't go into much detail here. I do wish everyone a fruitful and prayerful Lent. Not long ago, I got a new laptop computer. My other one is still working but I was having some issues. So I talked to a friend of mine that knows a lot about comput...

  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 Friday Everyone! September has arrived! For some reason August seemed a little slower than other months, but then I thought how about how school days started back up and I was like "Wait...didn't we just enter summertime?" Let me think....August was busy. Some things that have been important to my family over the years have closed. Whether price, attendance, or whatever, they closed. One of those has been resolved, while we work on others. As for writing...yes, progress is being made. I've been editing Sugar & Frost and I still love it. I've been editing for a while, now, but polishing my manuscripts the best I can before querying is important. I really hope readers will like it / love it, too. It's such a fun story! I've also made progress on other things I need for querying. Major work on my blurb is done, thanks to the help of my long-time critique partner. When I sent it to her, and she sent me back her suggestions, ideas started coming. I t...

Happy Thursday Everybody, It's March!  February seemed a little long to me (and not because of Leap Day) so on March 1st I was like "Oh wait...it's is March. I need to flip my wall calendar." So, what's going on? Let's see...I continue on the query road (nothing I'm ready to report, yet). As for writing, I decided to take one of my WIPs (Works In Progress) and write it with a completely different plot. And then, I got another idea and had to work on that! I try to focus on one WIP at a time because it helps me move forward, but sometimes you gotta get that other idea going before you can finish the previous manuscript. Sometimes the new manuscript becomes the one you finish first.  When I started with this blog post I was at a loss as to what I should say--not that I didn't have things going on, it's just that when I'm querying a manuscript, I don't say much about the process publicly. The same is true for when I'm writing a manuscript....

  Happy February! Okay, for the first time in a while I can say that a month didn't zip past me at lightning speed. I don't know if that's good or bad. Just that January didn't seem to go by quite as fast as most of last year seemed. Perhaps the lack of "zipping by" has to do with the fact that my eldest had a bacterial infection near the end of December and then 2 weeks later had Covid and a week later I had a bacterial infection (different one from eldest). So for awhile there, it was a bit crazy at my house. Luckily the rest of January was pretty healthy. This February has a couple of particularly interesting things about it...for one, there are 29 days this year for this month (most of the time it's 28) so Happy Leap Year! Query news...not really anything I'm ready to report on, so I'll let you know when there is. Writing news:  I have several unfinished manuscripts and after some revision work that I did for like 2-3 months, I'm back to th...

  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! 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 Wednesday All, Surprise! I'm actually posting BEFORE the end of the month! Imagine that. 😊 I think my part of Texas is confused about what season it is. We were having some cooler temperatures and then all of a sudden it decided to go up again. Now, that's relatively normal in a sense for us, but what is curious is that the tree in my backyard decided it wasn't winter, but FALL! All these colored leaves are covering my backyard. I looked around and thought "Guess the plants and trees are confused as to what season it is. Can't blame them since the weather is, too!" December is quieter so far than September through November were and I am NOT complaining about that. In September, my father suffered a bad fall and consequently there was a whole lot of stress. October saw my folks move out of their home of over 30 years into Assisted Living. When November came along, me and my family had a stomach bug. The very beginnings of December was the tail-end of m...

  Happy August Everyone! Wow...July went by faster than I expected. Between illness in the family (and again near the end of July and beginning of August), everything feels almost like a blur. I continue writing and querying between all the other real life stuff that has claimed my attention. Life doesn't slow down and neither do the demands of motherhood. I'm ready for all of this to settle down. I turn to my Catholic Christian faith a lot, which has been a source of comfort and help. I've got several WIPs (Works In Progress). I'm hoping to continue with Greek gods and goddesses--but one I'm working on is NOT part of my Immortal Dreams series. I also have some other things in play--fairies/Fae, maybe mermaids? With me, you just never know! The Author Encounter is taking this a bit slower this year--my business partner, Nan Jenkins, is working on her MBA, so we've pulled back on some of the events for this year, but looking to do some of our usual ones in the F...

  Happy Friday! It's April, if you can believe...or even if you can't believe it. Sometimes to me it seems like the year goes slowly and other times it seems fast. Real life has been taking up some of my attention lately, so I forgot to get a post ready ahead of time. Now we're approaching Easter (well, at least it's a little over a week away, but still it's almost here). I've got a story out on query with agents and we'll see how that goes. I participated in the recent Mood Pitch on Twitter and that was an interesting experience. As part of the pitches, participants could share Mood Boards (for those who don't know what a Mood Board is, they're images/words that express either the mood or something about a story--or whatever the person who creates the Mood Board wants to express). It was kind of cool to see pictures with pitches. The Author Encounter keeps moving along. We're having a quieter year due to real life (not bad, just busy). But we...

  Happy January and Happy New Year 2022 one and all! There have been many times that I've said this, and I expect many times to say it again: my observation is that every year brings both good and bad. Some years there's more good, some more bad, some in the middle. I don't know what 2022 will be, but I continue to look for blessings. One of the blessings of 2021, was in spite of Snowmeggeddon (or, rather, because of it) back in February, I got a new kitchen. Now, a storm with broken pipes is not the way I'd PREFER to have gotten this kitchen, but I love it. So, even though the storm sucked and being out of my house for 4 1/2 months wasn't always easy, I got this brand new kitchen that is so much more me and my family than what we moved into when we first got the house. In August, I got a non-displaced fracture in my shoulder. Yeah, I hadn't known silly detergent had spilled and I wasn't looking to perfect my detergent-skating abilities (or, in this case, in...

  Happy Thursday Darling Readers! It's been a while since I last updated and there are plenty of things to mention. I'm still trying to figure out the new template I'm using on this blog. The template came with some options I don't even use, so ignore them (I'm talking about the link options that don't go anywhere). My website is still being worked on and figured out--lots of things have gotten in the way of getting that completely up and running, but it is on my mind.  I've been writing! Yes, yes, I have! For months now I've been working on a new story (no connection to my Immortal Dreams series or the out-of-print, All's Fair In Love & Lion ). I can't tell you where I am with the story because I keep pretty mum about the process until I have specific news. But I am writing and I am editing and I am working on query stuff. The Author Encounter has been taking quite a bit of my time (but yes, I have been working on all the stuff I mentioned ...

Happy Monday One and All! Yikes! It's been a month since I wrote on this blog. I'm sorry! If it's any consolation, I did update the Jeannie Averie blog. This post is one that I started thinking about last week. I did some talking about this on Twitter (under both names) but I haven't actually written it all out in a more cohesive format. First and foremost: this is not a pity party. I hate throwing myself pity parties. Please, don't pity me. Don't feel sorry for me. My life has had ups and downs like everyone else's and I'm not looking for special treatment. In fact, I hate being patronized, too. The only special treatment I ever got out of this was having a laptop to take notes in high school and untimed standardized testing days. For the rest, I've worked hard. Oftentimes, swallowing my nerves and asking for help. Sometimes facing less-than-understanding teachers, but never felt entitled to anything except for the help I needed...and even the...

Happy Thursday Everyone! Life has been busy lately. I've been writing more regularly, which is awesome. Nothing is ready for you, yet, darling readers,  but don't despair. If I'm writing it means that work is one step closer to being in your hands. Lately I've been thinking a lot about how readers perceive their relationship with writers. The gap is less wide nowadays thanks to social media and the like; however, I still sometimes run across readers who are surprised that writers would want to hear from them. Let me put it to you like this: a while back I heard about a high school classroom that needed books, so I sent copies of some of my Immortal Dreams books (I don't know if it was all of them or the first three). The teacher sent me a card thanking me and telling me her students had already picked them up. I didn't need the teacher to send me a thank you, I was happy to send the books. But that card made my day. It's taped to my dresser mirror and ...

Happy Monday All, Like I've said before, my posting on here is inconsistent. Blog topics are hard to come up with and my life is full of being mom, wife, and writer. But enough of excuses! I'm gearing up for RWA Nationals 2018. I think I've been gearing up for it since Nationals ended last year. I can't help it. I had such a blast in Florida, I'm looking forward to what Colorado will bring. I'm also excited to see some friends I haven't seen in a long time. Particularly one who was a year behind me in high school. We hung out in the same social group and had one class together my Junior year. She's a sweetheart and I've missed her. We're going to get manicures and hang out. I think it's going to be a ton of fun! Nationals is a great way for authors (particularly Romance authors) to get together, find out what's new in the publishing world, and network. Publishers, agents, and other industry professionals come from all over as well...

Happy Wednesday Everyone, Right now, my schedule for posting on here is inconsistent. I haven't figured out a good schedule, yet, so, please, bear with me. I'm also considering what topics to cover, so it might be awhile before I have another post up here. I hope everyone is having a good Spring so far. It was pretty muggy on Tuesday, but that's Texas for you. Humidity can be thick and oppressive. I prefer cooler weather--although not snow or ice. I like 40-65 degree Fahrenheit with sunshine. I like snuggling under warm blankets with a hot drink and a good book (or movie or show!)  Two weeks ago I was suffering horrible allergies, and also dealing with migraines. I'm doing a little better now, but I'm not a big fan of spring for that reason--although I do like some of the spring styles. Summer will be hotter. It's barely April and I'm all ready for Fall and Winter again. I know that the places that have gotten a lot of snow are ready for the warmer...