Jack and I have been married for 45 years and we dated a good many years before that. So all in all, he’s been in my life more than 50 years—since I was 13. Like a lifetime, actually. So it seems we would have had a thousand “most” romantic memories on which to draw to answer this question. Truth is, from the very beginning, all of the time we’ve spent together has been special. We’ve always laughed, enjoyed the small things, and just gone through each day hand in hand, counting ourselves lucky. Has it all been what most would consider “romantic”? Well, no. So I had to spend a minute or two to think back on all the places we’ve been and things we’ve done to determine which memory was not only romantic but most romantic.
One year, for Christmas Jack’s brother and sister-in-law gave us frequent flyer miles to go anywhere we wanted (I know, right??). At tha
t time, I was in Virginia finishing up my year’s teaching contract and Jack was working in Kansas City as an IT consultant. We decided to spend my spring break in San Francisco.
Jack flew into Richmond the day before my break started and the next day we flew to San Fran.
We’d been there before, but always working, never with time to do whatever came to mind. I’d found a good hotel right at Fisherman’s Wharf that provided a concierge to arrange trips from the city and a car rental desk. We caught the shuttle at the airport and waited as the driver dropped off each passenger whose hotel was ahead of ours. As a reward for being patient, he took a detour down Lombard Street, commonly called the crookedest street in the world (actually, it isn’t even the crookedest street in San Francisco).
Flowers lined the street, which has to be taken at a low speed not only due to the curves but to the grade, and it was not only quite the adventure, but not something we would have thought to do on our own.
For the next several days we slept in, took our time at everything, and stopped to smell the flowers—and the fish. We walked the Wharf, Chinatown, Union Square, and Market Street. Taking advantage of the great transportation system the city has, we rode buses and cable cars all over. We took a city tour and (the one day we didn’t sleep in) also a day trip to Monterey, Carmel, and Pebble Beach. One day we rented a car and drove down to San Jose where we visited the Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum and later ate at one of our favorite restaurants, the Menara Moroccan Restaurant. Yum!
In short, we had a wonderful, romantic week. I can still picture us watching the seals at Pier 39 and eating breakfast outdoors at one of the wharf area’s many restaurants. We were unashamed tourists, and we loved it. Maybe because we had to spend so much time apart while working in two states, that vacation away from family and work pressures seemed dreamlike. 
Later, Jack found a job in San Francisco and we lived there for a little over a year. We loved our time living in the city but even the new memories we created can’t compare with those we made that trip. Pure love. Pure fun. Pure magic.
Read the next blog in the blog hop by going here.
Dee
Naval Maneuvers When a woman requires an earth-shattering crush of pleasure to carry her away, she can’t do better than to call on the US Navy. Sorry, Marines!
for the kids, bringing your family dog or cat with you on vacation adds another level of stress. They have to be walked, watered, and fed during the day. Leaving them in the car while you’re walking, watering, and feeding yourself and your children can be problematic. And finding pet-friendly motels is not always easy.
other, and that can’t be accomplished with one or more family member glued to video games, Facebook, or email. Set aside an hour or two each day for device time and everyone will end up appreciating the freedom. Eventually. (Hey, I’m not sayin’ it’s gonna be easy.)
Creating a character is a little like chemistry: a little of this and a little of that, and you have a character that’s memorable (and keeps the same name all the way through the book!). I found a how-to guide that had character sheets in it, and I adopted it to fit what I wanted to know about my characters. Suddenly, I had a form to fill in for height, hair and eye color, hobbies, education, family members, etc. I added elements for conflict and goals, too. I assigned each major character three adjectives and then wrote three things the character might do that represented those adjectives. I found the character sheets helped keep me in line and on target.
Probably I like contemporary because I’m lazy. In contemporary romance, there is little truly in depth research that has to be done. I can make up pretty much whatever I want and make it fit into a storyline, whereas when writing historical there is so much to find out about day-to-day living.
I like some of the best known authors like Julie London, Eloisa James, Mary Balogh, and others, but lately have discovered 
Just to be clear, I do not know these people and they are not in my books. 😉
As soon as I ate anything normal, I put those damn pounds back on.
I tried the Cabbage Soup diet. Have you tasted that stuff? Just don’t, is all I can say.
Kryssie Fortune writes the sort of hot sexy books she loves to read. If she can sneak a dragon into her paranormal books she will. Her paranormal heroes are muscular werewolves, arrogant Fae or BDSM loving dragons.