A long time ago, when my profile picture looked like this, I started a little Friday Column called Friday is Casual S*x Day! 

Not because I was having casual sex on Fridays or anything, but since I was such a shy thing, I thought a provocative title would loosen me up a little. Get my creative juices flowing. Now that I’ve got a whole bunch of published books on the table, red hair, and creative juices to burn, I hardly recognize that woman hiding behind her hands.

I used that picture a my profile picture because my kids were still in elementary school and I was hiding the fact that I write  sexually explicit romance novels. Of course, I excitedly informed everyone that their I’d gotten a contract for my first book, which led to the principal of my kids’ school offering me the opportunity to hold an author night! Yowch! Considering my first book was Crossing Borders, and Sparky and Officer Helmet were hitting the sheets, the kitchen counter, the tub, the walls, the floors, and the rug in front of the fire with a rather alarming enthusiasm, I politely declined without explanation.

Even that few years ago, the world was a vastly different place. Now, Z.A. Maxfield — ZAM — is the real me, and that other person, the one before Z.A. Maxfield busted out of her shell, is simply the caterpillar to my butterfly. Maybe I’ll bust out as something else entirely new again in a few years. You never know. Life is funny that way. But for now, I suggest we all just look around and see how far we’ve come, instead of how far we have to go, just for a second, and enjoy the moment.

Everybody Dance!