We think of the revolution ending in Yorktown, Va. The fact of the matter is that the French defeated the British in a naval battle right in the mouth of Chesapeake Bay. Because the British fleet was coming to rescue Cornwallis, the British general, Washington was able to surround Cornwallis.

To my mind, an adventure is something a person willingly undertakes.

One of the questions I face when working on a book about a historical event is whether I should visit the actual place that I'm writing about. No matter how scrupulously maintained a historic house or battlefield may be, it is nothing like it was in the long-ago past.

Unfortunately, we have a tendency to see figures from the past as caricatures - either all good or all bad - when the truth is always much more complex.

Deep down, I'm a Texas girl looking for that big romance every girl dreams about. Biologically, I look forward to being a cornerstone of a family. I'll be in my glory when I have a child on my knee.

I had been a real problem child, but once I got into acting, my parents never had any more trouble with me because all of that energy was directed in a positive way.

I think probably you can either write for kids, or you can't. That ability to imaginatively be a child and see the world as a child and feel and think like a child - you either have that ability or you don't.

You wake up in the morning; what do you want to know? You want to know what happened overnight. You want to know if you're safe. You want to know if you're family's safe.