I have family in the armed services and many of the heroes in the stories I write for HQN are military men. Because of this, there are some charities that are near and dear to my heart including Operationa Santa, which organizes the shipment of more than 35,000 Christmas stockings to deployed service personnel during the holiday season. If you’d like to be involved in getting together stockings for servicemen, please visit www.operationssanta.info.

If playing an elf this year isn’t your thing, you can always donate. A $25 donation alone will send a box of stockings to troops overseas!

I met Gail while standing in line for a banquet at the Romance Writers of America Convention in Orlando, FL. Now I’m excited to introduce her to all of you in this latest installment of my long-running series on military spouses and their true life love stories.

Q: How did you meet your husband?

I was a single mom working two jobs – daytime as a travel agent and at night as a cocktail waitress. He started coming in with his buddies and would always be in my section. He used to tell me he loved me when I handed him his rum & coke – little did I know he was serious.

Q: How did you know he was the one?

I was previously married and was in no way looking for a permanent relationship, especially someone in the military (previous husband was also navy). We had been friendly for several months – would talk a lot when he’d come in, would dance with him when it was slow (boss encouraged us to get the customers dancing). I didn’t even realize I kept asking him to dance. One night he walked in and I realized “Oh Jim’s back, wow, I’ve missed him” and then my heart stopped beating because it scared the crap out of me. Not only was he military he was from NY and planned to get out soon and move back to the Bronx. Something I really didn’t want for me and my daughter who was 4 at the time.

Q: Did you know he was in the military when you decided to marry?

Yes, I did know he was active duty. When we were on our honeymoon we talked about his career and if he should stay in until 20 years which at that time he could retire and find a civilian job. As a former navy wife I knew it wouldn’t be easy, but supported his choice to stay in. The steady pay, the health insurance all were factors especially with a small child and the hope that at least one more would be on the way some day.

Q: What challenges have military life posed for your romantic life?

He spent the first 12 years of our 14 years in duty stationed where he would either deploy for months at a time or travel frequently. This required us for quite a while to have to “relearn” each other when he’d come home. Which is nice… In a lot of ways it was like getting to have that first date again and again… all the giddiness, the butterflies in the stomach and some really passionate moments. Its been hard not to have him around to celebrate holidays, birthdays and anniversaries. We learned to celebrate before or after and it was always just a special. Valentines day without the overcrowded restaurants and grumpy staff is even better and more romantic. As far as I know neither of us have ever been tempted to cheat. For me he’s it, truly my best friend and soul mate.

Q: Many romances have dark and brooding alpha male heroes. Do you live with one in real life?

LOL, he can be brooding (I blame it on his Gemini personality), but he’s not dark. He’s more of the non-traditional alpha males – sensitive and intelligent. He was raised from the time he was 10 by a single mom (his dad died) and his older sister who is 21 yrs his senior. Most of the time he’s very take charge and decisive, but if I say something should be otherwise he will listen to me and in about 99% of the time is wise enough to know to listen to me. He’s very calm in a crisis and logical. So, if we were on a sinking ship I’d follow him without a second thought!

Q: My forthcoming novel, POISONED KISSES, is about a former soldier who was so traumatized by what he saw that he’s turned into a one man mission to arm the people he believes to be in the right. Does your husband have that kind of do-gooder complex? How has what he’s seen impacted his relationship with you?

Wow, that’s a hard one. For the most part he’s been on submarines and has been lucky enough to stay out of the ugly part although not the dangerous part of the action. He was part of the clean-up/response fleet for the Indonesian tsunami a couple of years ago. A few nightmares but otherwise he was okay. He has traveled extensively with the navy and seen a great deal of the world. I’d say what he’s seen makes him glad that he’s an American and we live in such a wonderful country, very patriotic. He is also active now with the Masons and is constantly volunteering to help out with them, especially if it means helping children. At work he’s always trying to help the junior sailors with their careers and even home life. So, yes, I’d say he has a bit of “do-gooder” complex.

How has his career impacted is relationship with me? I had to say it has made him very aware that our relationship is the most important thing. He knows that I’ll be here for him through all the good and the bad. He knows that even when work is going to hell and he’s ready to just quite, when he comes home I’ll listen and understand and then make it all go away for a least a couple of hours. He’s very supportive of me and my dreams. He never fails to tell me “I love you” or to show it. He’s a wonderful father who likes spending time with the kids. He cherishes those times because he knows that it could all change at a moments notice and he could be deployed again. And when he does, I know that he will be thinking of me and our kids every single day he is away.

Today I’m happy to continue my blog series, Military Lives, Real Love Stories. My guest is Lauren Gueret, a Navy wife and aspiring author.

Me: First, tell me a little bit about yourself and your writing.

Lauren: My mother had a son who died in 1998 and my father wrote and published a novella (Twenty Minutes in Eternity) about the experience. I was only 8 at the time, but I was so proud of my father doing that and wanted to do the same. I have been writing faithfully since I was twelve, trying to follow in my father’s footsteps. I focus primarily in the paranormal romance genre, my favorite authors being Christine Feehan, Keri Arthur, and Kresley Cole, among numerous others. I am, however, currently putting a compilation together of military short-stories inspired by my own situations, friends’, and injured war veterans’ at the VA hospital here in Hampton Roads.

Me: How long have you been married and how did you meet your husband?

Lauren: My husband, Jonathan, and I will be married for a year as of March 20. We actually met online while I was at UVA, through a dating site called True. I had a profile as a past-time away from school work. I was not looking for anybody, just to have fun looking at the guys who tried to contact me. My husband-to-be contacted me, and I thought, “What the heck” and wrote him back. We became friends, though I didn’t want a relationship because I was interested in another guy. Despite everything, Jonathan would not stop pursuing me, and helped me through a very traumatic experience. We obviously ended up together after that. =)

Me: The old adage is that opposites attract, but in my novels, my heroes and heroines are usually drawn together because they find that they share some common experience of loss. For example, in my forthcoming novel POISONED KISSES, my hero and heroine both lost their mothers to mental illness. What pain or loss or maybe even joyful past experiences did you and your husband have in common?

Lauren: As cliche as it sounds, we were both drawn to each other by loneliness. I had had several horrible relationships, some abusive, and I needed a lot of healing from the experiences. I needed a man who was willing to be patient and help me through what I was dealing with. My husband needed a woman to do just that for. His father worked out of state all throughout his adolescent years so he was without a manly figure in his life. Because of that, he had always been dubbed, ‘the nice, safe guy’ and he needed to affirm his role as a nurturing man. Cliche, like I said. haha

Me: Did you know that your husband would be going into the military when you married him? If so, did you think it would be as difficult as it has been?

Lauren: He was already in the Navy, and it didn’t bother me. He was away in AZ for school for the first 10 weeks of our relationship. I spent 2 weeks with him for Christmas break, and then I went back to school and he went back to work. We lived 3 hours apart, so we saw each other twice a month for a day and a half at a time. I didn’t think it would be difficult since I was already used to hardly seeing him, and so far, it hasn’t really been.

Me: You’ve said that you gave birth while your husband was still in Iraq…how did you cope?

Lauren: I realized early on that I had to get myself on a routine so that I wouldn’t become depressed. I went to the gym every single day in the morning, and afterward, I would go to the library and check out 10-12 books. I read all day, every day. Jonathan called me every few days, and emailed often, so that helped. His not being present was not too difficult. What saddened me was that he was not able to feel the baby kick or be present for doctor appointments. During my labor and delivery, the hospital allowed me to set up a webcam, so he watched the whole 12 hour process from Iraq. It was nice at least seeing and hearing him, but it was very sad when I was holding Andrew and Jonathan wasn’t there to do the same.

Me: Many military spouses have told me that their loved one returned from war and sometimes seemed like a different person, or several different people, which is why I adapted the chimera myth to explore the issue of Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome in my novella, WILD, TETHERED, BOUND. Do you or your husband have any experience with PTSD and if so, does this resonate with you?

Lauren: Jonathan does/did not have PTSD, but it has been very difficult for me to transition back to having him around. When you’re on your own for 6 months, you have to block out emotion and sexual longings so that you can cope. I also had to take care of a newborn on my own for 6 weeks, so I kept Andrew first before everything. Now that he’s back, it’s been taking me some time to get used to having him around again. I still haven’t found that healthy medium between balancing being a mom to Andrew and a wife to Jonathan.

Me: Given your experiences as a military spouse, what advice would you give other military wives?

Lauren: Be sure that you can handle raising a family on your own. That is the best advice I can give. Whether you like it or not, the US gov’t owns your husband, and he must do what they say. He won’t be around for important holidays and for a lot of the children’s lives. I know I am capable of doing this, but a good friend of mine is now realizing what being a military wife entails, and she’s not sure she can handle it. They may be throwing a 6-year relationship and 3-year marriage away, one that has an 18-month old son. I always say it takes a different breed of woman to do what I do, and I stand by it. You have to be independent and strong-willed, or you will not get through the deployments and schools they must attend.

Me: What’s the single most annoying thing about your husband and how do you make the relationship work anyway?

Lauren: My husband is a video game enthusiast, and I HATE video games. I am a bookworm through and through. When he first came back from Iraq, he continued playing them all day every day as he did when he was single. In a military marriage, you MUST communicate. I talked with him and asked that he simply learn when it is appropriate to play video games and when he must take care of his responsibilities. He has made a great effort and only plays when he has free time.

Me: What are your most romantic memories with your husband?

Lauren: Since we haven’t really had much time together, and having a 4 month old son, we haven’t had much opportunity to be romantic. haha As terrible as that sounds. I will never forget, however, last year’s Valentine’s Day. Jonathan had strep throat worse than I can describe, yet he went out and ordered me purple roses (in honor of my favorite color) and surprised me. I hadn’t thought we were going to celebrate at all. I still have a few of those roses in the pages of my dictionary.

I want to thank Lauren for stopping by! If you or anyone you know has a real life military love story that they’d like to share, please let me know.

Every holiday, our soldiers serve away from home, and through my interviews with military spouses, I’ve become involved with one particularly worthy cause: Operation Santa. I’ll be writing more about them, and encouraging you to get involved. I’m also going to be collecting donations at writer’s meetings, and such, so you’ll probably get sick of hearing from me. Consider this the first salvo. Please check out their website and consider making a donation.