As I continue to write as M. O'Keefe, I find myself following darker story lines. Plots I might have flinched away from I now rush toward. Using sex as a tool to tell women's stories is endlessly fascinating.

When I started to write 'Crazy Thing Called Love,' I wanted a conflict that would not only bring Billy and Maddy together in terms of proximity and give them a common goal but that would also drive a wedge between them. And nothing fit the bill quite like the arrival of some children.

I, for one, love kids in my romance novels. When done right, kids add so much conflict. Not just of the 'interruption on the way to the bedroom' variety. But conflict about commitment and insecurity.

Perhaps it's because I am reading romance differently than I did when I was younger, but I like my characters older. Grounded in reality. And nothing is more real than kids.

U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt has been described as founder of the Bull Moose Party, the man who led his troops up San Juan Hill in the Spanish-American War, a big game hunter, family man, civic servant and a host of other things.

I made a commitment and a promise to Ms. McSpadden, Michael Brown's mother, that I will pursue justice with the family at every avenue, be it on the federal level or at the state level.

I was born January 6, 1937, eight years after Wall Street crashed and two years before John Steinbeck published The Grapes of Wrath, his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel about the plight of a family during the Great Depression.

Women in America will have to find an answer for the pressures of work and family, but if you really care about women's issues you have to think about women in the world, especially Africa, Asia and the Middle East.