In BE FEARLESS psychotherapist Jonathan Alpert asks, “If your life is the same one year from now, will you be okay with it?” For 9 out of 10 people it’s not. Here I worked with Alpert to put his 5 step life-changing plan to paper. The proposal sold during a heated auction with rights simultaneously sold in six countries.

When I worked with former FBI profiler Mary Ellen O’Toole, PhD, I had nightmares. She told me everything she’d learned from interviewing the Green River Killer and many other serial killers and psychopaths. The result, Dangerous Instincts, teaches readers how to use the tools of a profiler to read people, make decisions and more. It resulted in national publicity on Fox & Friends, NPR, the Washington Post and many other outlets.

Winner of a Book for a Better Life Award and Wall Street Journal Book of the Year.

Marc Wallack, MD, initially asked me to help him write a memoir about how he ran a marathon after his bypass surgery. After talking with him for a while, though, I said, “I think you have a more important book in you.” Back to Life After a Heart Crisis is part memoir, part prescriptive. It’s the first book that delves into the emotional side of heart disease–What if the big one hits tonight? What if the big one hits while I’m having sex? What if the big one hits while I am driving my car? Wallack’s wife Jamie Colby, a FOX news anchor, shared caregiver tips and recipes. The end result is a step-by-step guide that heart disease survivors can use to go from hospital to the rest of their lives.

I love when a project changes my life, and this article did just that. I interviewed a number of married couples and experts about secrets–which ones were okay to keep and which ones weren’t. And then? I felt like a hypocrite because I’d been keeping a secret from my husband for more than a year. I’d taken a life insurance policy out on myself, but I had not told him about it because I knew he thought term insurance was a waste of money. Before I turned in the article, I fessed up about my secret. You want to know what he said? That it was no big deal! Indeed, this story helped me to cleanse my soul.

I’ve written numerous stories for Better Homes and Gardens over the years, ranging from How to Name a Baby (the topic of this feature) to the trend of grandparents raising their grandchildren to a health alert about garden hoses. But my proudest moment was the day one of the editors accepted an essay I’d written about Arbor Day and ran it on the coveted back page.

For “Help Your Marriage Survive Parenthood,” I got personal, blending first person essay with reported advice. I also coined a new term: “Husband envy.” The piece was fun to write, and it allowed me to interview all of the experts whose books helped to save my marriage.