I love a good story, but I really love a great one!

The reason behind loving a great story is chemistry. The best stories are written to be engaging, to make us care. The way they do that is by using our brain chemistry.

Neural activity in our brain starts by stringing together neurons like the Christmas lights on the Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree. Our brain lights up! Ok, these neurons don’t all pop on at once, but the continuous firing of neurons connects them, triggering us to remember more information.

Stories also release fun neurotransmitters like Cortisol (the stress hormone), Oxytocin (the love drug), and Dopamine (the feel-good). Oxytocin creates empathy and helps us identify with the hero/protagonist in a story. Dopamine keeps us focused on the plot. And Cortisol grabs your attention by responding to the action of a story—the danger, risk, or potential reward for the characters.

This storytelling cocktail creates mirroring, interest, excitement, comfort, arousal, and bonding (neural coupling), and that’s how brain chemistry captivates the audience.

Just remember, it’s only those engaging stories that make our Christmas lights shine bright. So, read an amazing book, watch a captivating movie, listen to an audiobook, or go to your local library for storytelling hour.

It’s good for your brain!

Light up your brain and get The Shoes Come First, Book 1 in the Jennifer Cloud Time Travel series for freeeee!

She yearns for romance. She needs a job. If she travels through time, she just might find both…

Sunnyside, Texas, present day. Jennifer Cloud hates that she’s unemployed and brokenhearted. Again. Still struggling to figure out how to adult, things get worse when an inherited outhouse hurls her back to 1568 Scotland. And though she’s enchanted by kilted hunk Caiyan, she stumbles onto a plot to steal devices that can alter the past.

Lost in a world that makes less sense than her modern one, Jennifer dutifully embraces her destiny to defend history. But when a Mexican revolutionary swipes her ticket home, her mission and future may have come to a dead end.

Can Jennifer recover her strange necklace without rewriting prior events and maybe even hook up with the savory Scot?

The Shoes Come First is the first book in the fun and frantic Jennifer Cloud time travel romance series. If you like magical portals, sassy heroines, and dashing defenders, you’ll love Janet Leigh’s lighthearted tale.

Yours in health & history,