Choosing which men to include in my portrait album was no easy task, let me tell you. With a lot of help from my writer’s group, I whittled my gallery of dozens of portraits down to twenty-seven men. A few were famous. Most are completely unknown today. All we have left of them is their faces — some bold, some reserved, some raffish, some soulful — but all men who were willing to put their lives on the line for a cause they believe in. And all worth a second look, or even a third.

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There’s more than one kind of romantic love.

There’s the kind we have all dreamed of, and a few of us have actually experienced — the love that falls on you like a thunderbolt, shocking you out of your normal self and electrifying you with feelings that make everything else seem pale and lifeless.

Then there is the kind of love that happens in my book, Wounded. The friendship between Adam Spencer and Sarah Winslow builds silently until it catches fire when he discovers her secret.

Which one is more romantic? I leave that to you to decide, dear reader.

I’ve been working at home on mundane projects for several days, scarcely leaving the house except to walk the dog. My husband and daughters are away. When I felt in need of a little romantic moment, I had to turn to the world of the imagination.

I had never seen this quote from Langston Hughes before, but it fits the photo perfectly, don’t you think?

“Let the rain kiss you. Let the rain beat upon your head with silver liquid drops. Let the rain sing you a lullaby.”

Those words have even more resonance in Northern California, where rain has been very scarce for three years now. The weather report keeps promising rain, but somehow it never comes.

Photo by moodboard.

The sense of smell is one of the most primal parts of the human organism. Apparently, the deep limbic brain where smell is felt is more than twice as big in the average man as it is in the average woman.

Certain smells have an arousing effect on men: lavender and pumpkin pie (in combination!); doughnuts mingled with black licorice, lavender, or pumpkin pie (hard for me to imagine exactly what that smells like); oranges, cheese pizza, roast beef, or cinnamon buns! Note the food theme. Maybe it’s really true that the way to a man’s heart (or other parts of his anatomy) is through his stomach.

What arouses women? Baby powder, cucumber, licorice, and lavender. Cherries and barbecue smell are a turnoff for women. Who knew?