Most people consider insomnia a curse but Laurie Breton is not among them. "As a child, I was an insomniac," she says. "While I lay awake each night, waiting to fall asleep, I entertained myself by making up stories." It was not until adolescence, however, that she realized other kids didn't have people living inside their heads.

The mother of a grown son and a teenage daughter, Laurie lives in a 100-year-old house in Augusta, Maine, with her husband and daughter.