Fairy Dust for Your Beloved

Want to enchant your beloved before he or she slips off into slumber? Try telling them a romantic fairy tale, advises Michael Webb in Once Upon a Time, his Addicted-To-Romance column.

Insomnia can plague your lover at any time, but hearing your soothing voice whispering a heroic tale of love and triumph could help send him or her off to dreamland. "You can read the stories from children's books, but I like to make up my own," Webb writes.

Try taking a page from your beloved's own life, incorporating friends, family or pets. A good fairy tale will feature villains and heroes, exotic locales and perhaps even a moral. "Jokes and puns liven up the tale as well," Webb says.

Even if you don't feel creative enough to stray too far from the classics, try adding your own twist. Update Sleeping Beauty by having her cryogenically frozen, for instance, or give Cinderella's evil stepsisters their come-uppance by sending them to work as clerks at a pumpkin farm.