y day they sell real estate, mop floors, make sandwiches and teach sixth-grade math. By night they enter worlds of passion and drama, of taut muscles and silken hair and landscapes lush with willow trees and thoroughbreds -worlds where men routinely risk their lives for love, women tremble at their lover's approach, and everyone lives happily ever after.

They are the Romance Writers of New Hampshire - the imaginations behind those proverbial bodice-ripping paperbacks your mother used to keep hidden beneath the couch cushions. Or, at least, they aspire to see their pen names on such guilty little pleasures.

Not that any of them feel particularly guilty about it. "I would argue that romantic fiction - uplifting, hopeful and emotionally satisfying - is a prescription for peace in this chaotic world," said Cheri Bergeron of Sunapee, one of about 35 members of the New Hampshire chapter of the Romance Writers of America. The members gather once a month to exchange ideas, critique each other's work and glean advice from their published members and occasional guest speakers.

Others take a sassier approach. Mary Ann Jock of Pittsburg, for instance, writes love scenes she wouldn't want to catch her sixth-grade class reading. Her recently finished manuscript, A Masked Affair, contains lines like: "Well, My Lord, why don't I just hop up on the pastry creams right here in Lady Fatherly's garden so you may have your wicked way with me . . ."

Colleen Huffman, a gray-haired grandmother who worked in Vegas as a young mom, peppers her writing with plenty of naughty language. "It's pretty steamy,"she said.

Esther Pemberton, on the other hand, sets some strict standards for the characters in her inspirational romances. "There's lots of sexual tension, but you close the bedroom door," she said.

Along with their varying styles, the members come from very different backgrounds and have very different aspirations. Their manuscripts reflect a whole range of genres, from straight romance -which itself contains dozens of categories - to historical fiction to the trendy "chick-lit" novel, even to literary fiction.

That eclecticism is valuable to group discussions, giving members different perspectives on their work and sometimes aiding them in their research. There's a lawyer in the group, for instance, who helps members with legal issues in their novels. Pemberton, who is originally from the island of Nevis, has helped other members flesh out descriptions of Caribbean locales.

The writers draw on their own experiences for some of their material: Bergeron describes her husband as her hero, and Huffman chuckles that the "historical" novel she's working on is set in her own lifetime. But many of them also do extensive research. Sophia Eastley, a belly-dance teacher from Concord and secretary for the group, has spent seven years on her historical novel set in ancient Egypt.

Of course, the writers tap their imaginations for much of their material as well. "When a story is about to be born, I usually see my characters in my head interacting with each other and then I try to build a plot around them," Pemberton said. "Or more precisely, they tell me their story and I write it."

But completing a manuscript is just part of the challenge. At the group's monthly meetings, much discussion time is devoted to the arduous struggle to get published. The aspiring authors tend to gravitate toward published authors such as Margaret Evans Porter, who dropped by a recent meeting on a rainy Saturday at the Holiday Inn in Concord.

"There's no mystique to getting published," said Evans Porter, a full-time writer who lives in Epsom and looks a bit like a romantic heroine with her heart-shaped lips and curly hair. "People come to you thinking you have some kind of magic dust. . . . All I can say is, here's how it happened for me."

Evans Porter began her first romance novel almost 20 years ago, shortly after she got married. "Not only was I in a romantic mood, but my brother-in-law got us a desktop system for a wedding present," she said.

Her third manuscript was purchased by Doubleday in 1988, and she went on to write 10 more novels and a novella. One of eight or nine published novelists in the group, she is currently working on a "chick-lit" novel.

At the meeting, while members discussed publishing trends and passed around books depicting long-haired lovers beside swan-filled ponds, Evans Porter advised them not to obsess over the market itself, but to focus on their own writing.

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