Sami asked Lauren Willig:

Lauren, you are such a prolific writer, how do you manage to produce as many titles as you do, while putting in the time to research historical context?

Lauren Willig That's a great question, Sami. A lot depends on the type of book and type of research: with my Pink books, I had already done a lot of basic research on the Napoleonic Wars, so, with each book, the research was limited to the specific details I needed to know for that particular setting and plot-line. That could still mean rather a lot of research (for example, "The Betrayal of the Blood Lily", for which I gave myself a crash course on late eighteenth century India), but it meant a basic familiarity with the larger historical picture. The same was true of "The Other Daughter". I'd already read a great deal about World War I and 1920s London for "The Ashford Affair", so I was able to start with a pre-existing knowledge base and build off that, which meant that I was able to get to the writing faster.

With other books, such as "That Summer", where the historical terrain is less familiar to me, I've had to take longer. Right now, for example, we've pushed off the publication of my next stand alone novel from summer 2016 to summer 2017 so I'll have time to research three new time periods for an epic set in Belle Epoque Paris, World War I Picardy, and Paris just before World War II. Those were periods I knew very little about, so much more intensive research was required and I didn't want to skimp on it.

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