The idea was inspired partly by the nation's divorce rate (43 percent of first marriages end in separation or divorce within 15 years, according to the National Center for Health Statistics) and conversations with friends, Taylor says. Input from Payne's clients didn't hurt either, she adds.
"I go to my son's preschool, and almost all of the other kids' parents aren't together anymore," she says. "I talk to my married friends and they're having sex once a month. They're too busy. They're too tired. They're stuck in a rut."
Taylor, who writes saucy stories for Cosmopolitan and Redbook magazines, dishes sex advice with the nonchalance of a soccer mom who's sharing her recipe for green-bean casserole.
"Anything you can do to make time for your spouse and open the lines of loving, sexual communication is a good thing," she says. "And if technology is going to help you do that, great. We should embrace that and use it to our advantage."
Sounds as if she did. Taylor tried out all of the book's games on her husband of eight years. She sent sultry photos of herself and racy, recorded messages to his mobile phone. She surprised him by downloading erotic stories into his digital music player. She asked him to share his favorite sexual fantasy, searched for corresponding pictures on the Internet and invited him to review the images with her.
And she did a number of other naughty things we're too bashful to describe -- except to say that some of them involved remote controls and drive-through lanes at fast-food restaurants.
"We don't recommend doing this stuff on your work computer, obviously," Taylor says. "And we're also not suggesting that you need to put on these big productions every time you want to make love. We're just saying, `Hey, there are fun, new ways to shake things up a bit.'"
"If all of this is a little too much fun for you -- but you still desire an intimate connection, you'll get further than the average person by taking the time to personalize your correspondence in old-fashioned ways," says Laurie Puhn, a consultant for online dating service Match.com and author of Instant Persuasion: How to Change Your Words to Change Your Life.
"Don't ever forget that because so many people rely on tech communi-cations, you could win a lot of points or really stand out from the crowd simply by taking that extra little step of follo-wing up that e-mail with a phone call -- or following up that phone call with a personal, handwritten note," Puhn says.
"And who wouldn't like someone who knows how to turn off their phone to engage in a thoughtful conversation?"
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