I was raised in an orthodox Jewish home where it was expected that, as a woman, I'd marry an investment banker, raise kids in the suburbs and go to temple. I wasn't raised to set the world on fire.
It's not just: you get off the plane, you're back home, everything's fine. Maybe the physical danger ends, but soldiers are still deeply at risk of being injured in a different way.
I am honored to have had two Hallmark Hall of Fame Productions made from my novels - 'Silver Bells' and 'Follow the Stars Home.'
I wanted to find something I could do at home. I sat down with a friend and made a list of all the things I could try, and one of them was writing a novel.
The history of fan fiction demonstrates how efficient, and effective, women have been at pooling together to get what they want out of their stories. It's been a largely female-driven world.
I know that there's a cultural expectation that women be nurturing, delicate flowers. And I am. So delicate. But that doesn't mean I can't write a good, gory murder scene.
Make no mistake, most women are well aware that they've never had it so good; when they enter a spa or salon, it is purely a hair/nails thing, a prelude to an evening of guilt-free fun.
Mantle didn't want to stick out, but he did. He didn't wish to be treated as special, but he was. He was uncomfortable being the center of attention, but he was the centerfielder for the most famous franchise in sports.
'Emma' is my favorite Jane Austen novel - one of my favorite novels period; a novel about intelligence outsmarting itself, about a complicated, nuanced, irresistible heroine who does everything wrong.
There are several authors who are also lawyers - and not only the ones who write legal thrillers. There are other attorneys who write romantic fiction, and I know of at least one who writes young adult books.
I still have some of my old University essays, and I do still have my drawing book from primary year seven.
Ever since I was young, I've read Austen and the Brontes. My friends laugh, but those books are always so tragic and wonderful - those stories, they're just incredible.
Letterman, despite whatever idiotic (or worse?) things he may have done with women on his staff, was wise enough to realize that silence isn't permanent and peace of mind can't be bought.
Poetry is the most subtle of the literary arts, and students grow more ingenious by the year at avoiding it. If they can nip around Milton, duck under Blake and collapse gratefully into the arms of Jane Austen, a lot of them will.
So many women today have become so focused on their children, they've developed these romantic entanglements with their children's lives, and the husbands are secondary. They're left out. And the romantic focus is on the children.
I sail, run dogs, ride horses, play professional poker and tell stories about the stuff I've been through. And I'm still a romantic; I still want Bambi to make it out of the fire.
If I can give you one strong piece of advice, when you go away for that romantic weekend, whatever you do, do not accept or take the upgrade to the honeymoon suite.
I think that taking night trains or meeting someone on the road is pretty romantic. I've done a couple of things like that. I've surprised someone in Paris. And hopefully, when you surprise someone, they're happy to see you.
If I were sufficiently romantic I suppose I'd have killed myself long ago just to make people talk about me. I haven't even got the conviction to make a successful drunkard.
For me, the performance was always playing different people. And so when I got older, was no longer the romantic leading movie star, it became more and more interesting for me, the characters I played, you know?
And I don't believe that children are innocent. In fact, no one seriously believes that. Just go to a playground and watch the kids playing in the sandbox! The romantic notion of the sweet child is simply the parents projecting their own wishes.
