Most of us have at least a passing interest in astrology. We know our “sign” and can’t seem to pass up the chance to read our horoscope if we see one in a magazine or newspaper. But how familiar are you with numerolgy? Do you know that you have a life path number? How to calculate it? What it means?

When I was writing Christmas With Daddy, I wanted my heroine to have special skills that would allow her to assist the detective hero in finding a missing teenaged girl. I wanted these skills to be unusual…something that the hero might find hard to take seriously.

Having recently read The Power of Time by Pauline Edward, I decided to make my heroine a numerologist. Based on my research (primarily reading Pauline’s book and with additional help from Pauline) I know the following neat stuff:

My life Path Number is 3. According to Pauline’s book this means I have “excellent communications skills, a lively and positive outlook, resilience, lots of charm, wit and enormous creative potential.” Hey…I like that! On the flip side, I’m prone to speaking before thinking, tend to hog the stage and need to work on being responsible and organized.

If you want to calculate your life path number, it’s quite easy. Basically write down your birthdate in numbers (month, day and year) then add them up and keep adding until you end up with one number. Here’s how I found mine: Birthdate: 3 (March) + 3 (day) + 1 + 9 + 5 + 9 (my birth year is 1959) = 30. Simplify to 1 digit by adding 3 + 0 = 3. Now, that’s a little simplified, so if you want to make sure you’re doing it right and find out more about the meaning of various life path numbers, you’ll have to check out Pauline’s book.

See the cool stuff you learn when you’re researching romance novels?