The Fountain of Youth—I've Found it!

My Secret.

I've found a way to turn back the clock. People want to know my secret. They comment, "You look like a teenager." Are you getting 'work' done,” they asked? No, I answered, and I've often told my friends more than once that keeping an active mind and body is more important than visiting a plastic surgeon.

Over the past several years, I've had numerous affairs. The first with an outlaw motorcycle club member, then an Irish hitman, next up a famous leathercraft artist who kidnapped me, then on to a mobster-brothel owner. I broke from the bad boys with my latest lover, an undercover FBI agent. I've taught yoga in Vegas, been on the verge of becoming a famous romance author (I wish), pursued an art career in Philadelphia, worked in a gallery selling art in Chicago, and ran an illegal pot farm in Oregon. Ain't life grand! Some of this is from real-life experience, and some is simply spun from my imagination. Still, all of it is woven into the pages of my novels, but it's what's giving me my glow. My heroines have all come from a small part of me.

How does writing romance keep me young, you ask?

• Inventing book boyfriends and getting to know them keeps me happy. When they are new, they are delightful, and when they begin to bore or irritate me, I can close the book on them, and most likely, the book is done. I don't have to cook dinner or do other chores for them either, and if they've been naughty, I make the heroine take them to task.

• I get to come up with fun and games scenarios to torture them, things that might cause my husband to file for divorce.

• I get to try out all my sex scenes with my husband first to make sure they work and are anatomically possible.

• It’s given me a reason to get up in the morning. Every person is driven by something. I like to learn new things, and writing romance is challenging; I can’t possibly ever learn everything there is to know about it.

• Besides learning about romance, I’m forced to learn many other things. How crime scenes are investigated, how pot is cultivated, how to make a leather harness, how long it takes to fly to Ireland, and how to have sex while sitting next to someone on a plane without being discovered.

• Love is the one thing that almost everyone still believes in. People now seem to argue about everything else, but people still believe in love, and I want them to. I can use that belief to help them learn to trust themselves and trust others before they judge them too harshly.

• It hasn't been all roses. There have been some thorns. Marketing is hard, but writing and having the time to do it—that's a blessing

Writing romance keeps me happy and it’s my secret weapon against aging. It's kept my thirst for knowledge growing and allowed me to keep my glow.

Please share what you do to keep your glow:

Have a great Thanksgiving, peeps. Take some time to enjoy your friends and family, and refill your cup! Romance Writers of America has one space available in their Paper to Polished program. There are scholarships available.