Teresa Southwick discovered her love for the written word because she was lazy. In a high-school history class she was given a list of possible projects, and she chose to do an imaginary diary of Marie Antoinette since it seemed to require the least amount of work.

But she soon realized that to come up with any plausible personal entries for poor Marie, she needed to know a little something about the woman. Research was required. After all, Teresa sincerely wanted to pass the class. Nowadays, she finds that knowing as much as she can about her characters is more fun than it is work.

She is the author of over 30 books, four of them historicals for which she had to do research. She's happy to say laziness played no part in the creative process and no brain cells were harmed in the writing of those books.