Paula Panariello didn’t retire with a lifelong dream of becoming an author. She simply knew that spending her days watching Bonanza and Gunsmoke wasn’t going to do it for her.

A longtime reader of historical romance, she wondered whether she could write one herself. With encouragement from a friend, she tried — and discovered an entirely new part of herself in the process.

We talk about:

• The unexpected question retirement raised: What do I want to do now?
• Writing a first novel in two weeks — and discovering how much she didn’t know
• Feeling like an imposter when trying something new later in life
• The people who see possibilities in us before we see them ourselves
• Moving from “I wrote a book” to “I am an author”
• Why Paula believes life experience has strengthened her writing
• Regency romance, research and weaving real history into fiction
• Why her heroines have become increasingly important to the stories
• Keeping the mind active and maintaining connections after retirement
• Capturing family history while we’re still the people who remember it

Paula didn’t set out to reinvent herself. She followed an interest, learned what she needed along the way, and eventually realized that the way she saw herself had changed too.

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