Sam Taplin grew up in a beautiful valley in Yorkshire, where he dreamed of being a writer, and after three years reading other people's books at university he started writing his own for Usborne.

He's been doing it ever since. When he's not writing about lonely rabbits or inquisitive bears, he likes doing card tricks, writing songs and playing long games of chess by the fire.

Jenny Brown earned a graduate degree in 19th-century history. Her very first professional sale as a writer was a biographical piece about Louisa May Alcott's childhood. Years later, her favorite hobby continues to be reading biographies of people who lived in the 18th and 19th centuries.

She has earned her living in many different ways: performing as a singer-songwriter in Western Massachusetts and Nashville, writing nonfiction, and, for the past fifteen years, running a successful small press. Jenny has been a student of astrology since her teens.

This ancient art helps her make sense of her life and accept that the way she is, with all her oddities, is the way she's supposed to be. Though she has always loved reading love stories set in the past, what got her writing them was finding, at last, the Hero of Her Own Romance.