For six years I was the guardian of the gate for our local Catholic church here in Iowa. A parish secretary's job is not easy, but it can be very rewarding. Unfortunately, everything you do is scrutinized closely by the congregation. If you have a second job, perhaps you might think twice before allowing anyone to know what you do in your spare time. It can cause you headaches you don't need.

As for me, I write erotica for Ellora's Cave and New Concepts Publishing. I don't hide that I do, but neither do I go around ringing my bell and shouting the news like a town crier. I am discreet because southern women are raised that way.

She was - and still is - the scourge of our congregation. A little old lady with a face like wrinkled silk, wiry white hair worn chopped off close to her pink scalp, and very intense gray eyes behind thick lens glasses, she can be a force with which to reckon. Her tongue is sharper than a Ginsu and can cut much deeper. When she gets her Irish dander up, there is no stopping her. She can turn a grown man into a quivering blob of jelly with one well-aimed barb.

She scared me. She always had.

Until the day she came bristling into my office with shoulders hunched, fists clenched, and beady eyes glinting.

Busy typing a letter on the computer, I glanced around when I heard the snort of disgust. It was reflex that made me jerk by fingers from the keyboard because she reminds me so vividly of my first piano teacher. I was afraid of her, too.

"Yes, m…ma'am? M…may I help you?" I stammered.

Her thin little arms folded over her chest and her pugnacious chin went up. "Well," she snapped, letting the word fall like a cannon shot. "I suppose you are over there working on one of your filthy little books, huh? Writing some of that nasty porn stuff on church time?"

It was a challenge, a gauntlet thrown. This feisty little septuagenarian was glowering at me as though I had committed the most unpardonable of sins. Her withering stare was meant to make me cower, tremble, hide my head in shame, but I'm not ashamed of what I write. At that time I was fifty years old and felt I'd earned a bit of respect in my advancing years. I wasn't cowered. I didn't tremble nor did I hide my head in shame. I lifted my chin - along with its crepey folds - and let my own little Irish demon loose.

"Yes, ma'am, I sure am," I lied. I smiled sweetly, batting my eyelashes. "Could you tell me: What's another word for heaving bosoms?"

Those beady little eyes flared. The thin lips parted. I heard an intake of sound that I was afraid might be the onset of a massive coronary. She stared at me for a full ten seconds but then she sputtered. The little eyes crinkled at the corners. The lips stretched into the most glorious smile. The thin arms uncrossed and one wrinkled hand went to slap her knee.

"Damn, girl, but that's good!" she pronounced. "That's damned good!" She strode over to me with her hand out. "You got spunk. I like that!"

Her grip belied her age; it was like steel. But it was the warmth coming from her eyes that melted my heart. She jerked me into a fierce hold and patted my back hard enough to make me wince.

"Now," she said with an audacious wink. "Tell me how to buy one of them filthy books of yours."

There were a few parishioners who thought what I did in my spare time was terrible but Father didn't have a problem with it. Both jobs were important to me. At that time in my life I felt I had something to offer both worlds and it would have been terrible if I had been forced to choose one over the other. Most of the congregation who knew about my writing was encouraging and many have become faithful readers.

I have since quit my day job to write full time and I've never regretted it. I am doing what I feel I was always meant to do… in the time of my life I was meant to do it. I like being a feisty grandmother whose grandkids think what gramma does is a hoot.

As for that other feisty old lady? She and I became very good friends. I went to visit her a few days ago. On the end table were two of my latest erotica novels, WyndSheer and Her Reaper's Arms.

"What do you think?" I asked her, pointing to the books.

"Love them covers," she said. "Always did like my men naked as a jaybird." She shrugged. "Gals on there ain't bad, but who looks at them? Too bad you don't see nothing below the waist. Makes you wonder if them boys got anything to brag about."

Did I say feisty old lady? I should have said dirty old lady!