*Note: This was supposed to be posted yesterday, but I didn’t quite get to it. I’ll put up pics from our 1st anniversary soon! 🙂 *

Dear Jon,

One year ago today, you and I vowed in front of God, our family and our friends, to love, honor and cherish each other until death parted us. I remember the excitement of getting ready, the nervous butterflies as Mom helped me into my dress, the ninety-six bobby pins holding my veil in place. 🙂

I can’t imagine being happier than I am right now. You are the brightest part of my day, the sweetest, most genuine man I know and the person I have the most fun with. With you, I’m never afraid of being just me, I’m never scared about what will happen next, I’m never worried that a day will come when what we have will end. Since our marriage is based on God, we have all of eternity together. I can’t wait!

I love how the last thing you do when you leave for work is tell me you love me and the first thing you do when you get home is kiss me. I love your protective streak, your goofy sense of humor, and the way you still romance me. I love how you spend those few extra minutes cuddling with me with the morning, how you’re always up for hunkering down under a blanket while watching a movie, how you reach for my hand whenever we’re walking together.

Nothing I can ever do or say will ever come close to expressing how much I love you, Jonathan O’Brien. And you know the awesome part? As amazing as this year has been, I have a feeling that the best is yet to come!

So all this to say: I kinda like you, Jon. :).

I love you,

Your wife

www.eastbrookstudios.com

I get a lot of email asking me for advice for writers. Which absolutely humbles me because I’m ALWAYS looking up advice for writers! I’m the most distracted, random author there is, I think, so I’m probably the last person you want to take advice from.

I always refer people to The Christian Writers Guild’s site here. If you can afford the correspondence course, you will definitely see a huge improvement! Plus, you can get advice from people much more experienced in this field than me!

Also, one of my online writing buddies, C.J. Darlington (who just got a contract for her first novel – YAY!!), has done nearly 100 interviews of well-known authors asking them for their advice for novelists. You can find her blog here. Be sure to check out the synopsis for her novel – looks like it will be amazing!

My best advice? Stick with it. If God’s given you the desire to write, then by all means, write! Remember that He who began this work in you is faithful to complete it. Which means you’ve got all you need! Read about writing, read people’s advice about writing, and if you’re brave enough, ask your favorite authors about writing. And if you’re REALLY brave you can ask me – I promise I’ll write you back as soon as I can, but you’ve got to promise not to laugh at my scattered ideas!

Our first anniversary is in FIVE days!! I can’t believe it’s been an entire year! 🙂

So, as you’ve noticed, I’ve been doing a total overhaul of my blog and attempting to update my website. I know there are still quite a few bugs to work out. Sorry about that! I do not get this HTML stuff. “Easy to Learn” is what everyone always says. To use a ’90’s phrase, “NOT!!” HTML is it’s own language, as the nice support guy told me on the phone yesterday. I’ve never been very good with learning languages – I have a hard enough time with English.

I’ll stop complaining. You may have noticed a slight change on the new website though:

The cover of Cool Beans changed just slightly – as in, new girl! Once we had already seen and approved the previous cover, we found out another publishing house had just published a book with the same girl on the front. 🙂 Oops! So, we have a new girl.

Jon and I have a new TV show obsession – has anyone seen “Chopped” on the Food Network yet? It’s a fairly new show and it’s sooo fun! First off, you must understand, I love the Food Network. I love using terms like “plating”. That and HGTV are the current favorites. One makes me want to be a gourmet chef (wouldn’t that be awesome? All the fun of cooking and no clean up!) and the other makes me want to remodel our house (Jon’s not too fond of HGTV for that reason). 🙂

“Chopped” was on last night and we were out of milk, so we were hurrying to the grocery store before it started. We’re walking up to the store and you can see these cute little Girl Scouts and their moms all gathered around a table. We had just bought cookies three days ago and still had some left, so Jon immediately picked up the pace.

“Just keep walking,” he told me. “Don’t look at them, don’t make eye contact.”

So, we walked in, I didn’t look at them, didn’t make eye contact. A cute little brown-haired girl asks Jon, “Would you like to buy some Girl Scout cookies?”

And Jon says, “Uh…maybe.”

We left with milk and a carton of Caramel de-Lites to join the rest of the Girl Scout family in the kitchen.

This is not a good a sign. I already knew I couldn’t resist little kids (or cookies for that matter), so Jon was going to have to be the strong one. Heh. He went down like a stack of blocks in front of a two-year-old. Solidifying our role in the neighborhood – The Sucker House.

Kody does not help matters. He’s getting big enough that he’s starting to look a little more intimidating to little kids, but kids love Kody and Kody loves kids – especially little girls. He flirts like no other dog I’ve ever seen. We’ll take him on walks to the park and there’s always little kids there and he immediately runs to kiss the girls.

So, I’m off to get breakfast. Probably Thin Mints and a hot cup of coffee. They can’t be that much worse than a sugary cereal. Right?

There is only three days left in my contest! Be sure to enter for an autographed copy of Miss Match by sending me an email with “Contest” in the subject line. My email is erynnmangum@gmail.com. Also, you can get autographed books anytime by ordering off my website! It’s cheaper than buying retail and it’s also personally autographed to you! Kody apparently heard me and Jon discussing our summer traveling plans because I’ve found him playing with two different duffel bags that he pulled out from under the bed. Someone is ready to go see our relatives! I cannot wait to introduce you to Maya! Keep checking my wesbite, I’ll post a preview to her story soon!

I hope everyone had a wonderful Valentine’s/President’s Day weekend! Mine was awesome – we drove up to Colorado Springs and spent the weekend with some very sweet friends of ours. The boys went snowboarding, the girls went shopping ($3 shirts! Yay!) and we ate lots and lots of AMAZING desserts. Pretty much it was one of the best weekends ever. So, being used to having a dessert every night over the weekend, I had to come home and make a huge batch of chocolate chip cookies. You can’t have chocolate every night and not get somewhat addicted to that warm fuzzy feeling deep in your heart. How’s that saying go? A cookie a day keeps depression away? Something like that…

Jon and I have been reading through 1 Corinthians before we turn the light out at night and I was struck by something in chapter 3. It says: “Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit lives in you? If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy him; for God’s temple is sacred, and you are that temple.” Think about that! You are so precious to God that if anyone messes with you, God will destroy them. On the flip side, though, if you mess with yourself you’re in trouble. Earlier in the chapter, he talks about there being jealousy and strife among them. (I have never used the word “strife” in a sentence, but that will now be my goal for today). It’s a good reminder to pay attention to what we’re doing with ourselves – especially that time of the month when PMS is raging (don’t you HATE that?!).

Yesterday, Kody bit the tail off of Mr. Dinosaur sending the happy little green guy to the big Jurassic Park in the sky. Which left his toy count at two – one rawhide bone and a plastic newspaper thing. A little less than the twenty he started out with. We’ve sent chickens to the big Chicken Coop in the sky, hedgehogs to the big Forest in the sky, and bouncy balls to the big Tennis Court in the sky. So, I realized that if we didn’t give him something to work those little almost-adult teeth on, he was going to tear apart my house. And yes, he ripped two towels in his crate to shreds before I realized this. I’m not the brightest sometimes. So, after Jon got home, we loaded our little monster into the car and drove him to Petsmart, where he slipped and slid across the tile floor trying to meet all the cute girls in the place (I’m dead serious. Kody loves girls!). We found the toy aisle and he proceeded to sit there staring at us while we tried to ask him what toys he wanted. So frustrating. I think he was showing off for this really cute little ten year-old girl. Sort of like, “Toys? I am so much more mature than toys now. Sheesh.” Once we got back in the house with his two new toys, though, he couldn’t put them down. He’s been playing with them ever since. Dorky dog. He’s actually a very good dog, despite the hard time I give him. He has yet to chew anything important in the house (the towels were his), and he’s very good about asking to go outside. He plays by himself very nicely while I’m writing. The only issue we’ve had is digging, and that’s only on occasion. I’m putting up a few pics of the weekend. What did you do with the AMAZING three-day weekend? 
Kody’s Happy Face
The Girls in Colorado Springs
The Whole Gang (minus Brian’s fiance Becca)

Hey everyone! Hope you are all having an amazing Monday! I have an update on the Maya Davis series. Because of some financial issues due to the economy, Cool Beans will actually be releasing in April instead of this fall. But, that’s the perfect time for some summer reading, because Book 2 in that series (currently untitled) will release right afterward in July! I hope you all enjoy this upcoming series! I’m very excited about it! In the meantime, I’m going to be working on a new series idea about a group of newlyweds. I’ll keep you all posted on that! Things have been a little hectic here – and on top of that, Jon got sick and now I’m sniffling. Not fun! But in the midst of swabbing with Zicam and popping Sudafed (yuck, yuck, yuck), we’re doing pretty good! Kody is growing like a marshmallow in the microwave and starting to get way more vocal. Only he doesn’t bark very often, it’s more like a groaning/howling/whining sound. Very odd. Also….drumroll please…I’m starting a new contest! Send me an email at erynnmangum@gmail.com with “Contest” as the subject title and you’ll get the chance to win a signed copy of Miss Match! I’ll draw the winner on March 1st. Be sure to check out my website – for a limited time, you can order an Autographed Copy of any book in the Lauren Holbrook series. Prices and such are listed on my website. Today is kind of a cloudy, gray, dryer lint day and I wouldn’t mind it so much if there was even the vaguest chance we would get snow. But, it’s too warm and so this is like the weather is mocking us. To all of you in the midst of snowstorms, go out there and make a snowman for me please!