I Love Love

Flavia loved her career. Even after a grueling international flight and jet lag that would knock out an elephant, she looked forward to the start of the writer's conference where she would represent the publisher as she gave several workshops and met with her writers-ones she already worked with and new ones looking for a home for their manuscripts. Some things didn't change-not the writing, not the reading, and not the fans who waited with bated breath for their favorite author's next book. Pausing over her perfect martini, she thought down her To Do list. Get over jet lag. That was the point of arriving a day early. Catch up her reading-or the manuscripts would follow her like a puppy. Which order for the points she would emphasize in her presentation? Formatting your manuscript-it might sound repetitious to her, but to the newbie writers up early and ready to start their day, her presentation should be as new as their interest. That was tomorrow. Flavia loved her work. She loved the writers who came to have fun and advance their careers. She loved impossibly handsome men like the one now sitting at the other end of the bar. The wish he were mine but I'm never that lucky romance hero of her dreams. Before she could catch his attention, the squealies surrounded him. Squealies. You had to love them. They shrieked their enthusiasm, they worried more about the length and polish of their manicures than the length and polish of their manuscripts, but sometimes they transformed into real writers. They dragged him into the center of their group. Everything started to go wrong from then.

Aubergine St. Valentine has a problem, courtesy of Las Vegas, the Spirit of Elvis, a Drive thru wedding chapel, and a momentary weakness of will. Once a man acquires a wife, unlike the wife, of course, he can revert back to his caveman ancestors. Get fat, lounge on the couch for hours watching sports, spit, make obnoxious noises and fumes, basically revert to the frog he is and still think he's the handsome prince he once impersonated. Added to that he loses the tiny bit of anxiety that keeps a beau on his toes and makes him ready to fulfill his princess' every wish and command. Her prince hadn't yet turned into Slob Boy, but the day would come. As men age they are deemed more handsome, as women age they turn into the witch-bitch that resembles the rest of their female line. The solution? Reverse time. Divorce was the tool.

Aubergine St. Valentine loves her life as a bestselling romance writer. At least she loved it until everything slid a little sideways. Handsome husband. Check. Sweet baby. Check. Blinking cursor at the top of an empty page. Check. Publisher? No check there. New manuscript? No. Time to retire? ... When does an author become an authority? Probably when she has a blank page and all her other books remaindered. Maybe when caftans were more becoming than hot pants. When you stand in front of a writer's workshop, no matter that it is in your own house, and the newbie writer's in front of you expect to be amazed. When you don't have a work in progress. When the love of your life is a closet real estate investor adding to the list of buildings in his compound.