Nora Roberts Biography
Nora Roberts was born in Silver Spring Maryland, the youngest of five children. Her early schooling included several years in Catholic school. Though she jokes about the nuns, the award winning writer credits them with instilling in her the work ethic that has made her one of the most popular and prolific authors of the last twenty years. "…the fact is the discipline that they drum into education sticks. You can have all the talent in the world but if you don't have the discipline to sit down and write on a regular basis, you're not going to write or publish any books."
She married young, settled in Keedysville, Maryland, and worked briefly as a "really bad legal secretary." After her sons were born, she stayed at home and filled the hours by trying every craft that came along - ceramics, embroidery, sewing, canning, macramé, needlepoint, and baking. Then, came the fateful blizzard of '79.
Having been born into a family of readers, reading and making up stories had long been an integral part of Nora's life. As the story goes, one stormy winter's day, snowed in with the boys, tired of playing Candy Land and desperate for release, she took out a number two pencil, applied it to a spiral bound notebook and thus began her writing career.
Ms. Roberts did not become an immediate success. By the time Irish Thoroughbred, her first novel, was published in 1981, she already had three years of hard work and several rejected manuscripts behind her. Since then, her ascension to the top of the literary world can only be described as meteoric. According to Entertainment Weekly, "her stories have fueled the dreams of twenty-five million readers." And her books have been published in at least 25 different countries.
Ms. Roberts also publishes under the name J.D. Robb. Naked in Death, the first of the immensely popular Robb books, appeared on bookshelves in the spring of 1995. A futuristic novel set in 2058 in New York City, it introduces Eve Dallas, a detective with the New York City Police and Safety Department. The Gothic Journal hailed Robb's new work as "a unique blend of hard-core police drama, science fiction and passionate romance" while The Paperback Forum called it "a fantastic new detective series."
Of the "in Death" series, Roberts says "each book resolves the particular crime or mystery that drives it, but the character development - the growth and changes - and the tone of the relationships go more slowly. I enjoy that tremendously." She also credits the series with adding countless males to her legions of faithful female readers.
How did she come up with the pseudonym? She took the initials of her sons' first names - Jason and Dan - adding Robb, a shortened version of Roberts.
Nora met her second husband, Bruce Wilder, when she hired him to build bookshelves. They were married in July 1985. Since that time, they have expanded their home, traveled the world and opened a bookstore together.
Truly prolific, Nora Roberts' recent releases include The Hollow, High Noon, Tribute, Suite 606, and The Pagan Stone. Among her earlier titles are O'Hurley's Return, Black Rose, Northern Lights, Calhouns, MacKade Brothers, Reunion, Moon Shadows, Heaven and Earth, Heart of the Sea, Blue Dahlia, Macgregor Grooms, Winner Takes All and Gabriel's Angel. Among her novels written as J. D. Robb are Visions in Death, Survivor in Death, Ceremony in Death, Rapture in Death, Witness in Death, Vengeance in Death, Immortal in Death, Glory in Death, Midnight in Death, Memory in Death, Born In Death, Innocent In Death, Creation In Death, Strangers In Death, Salvation In Death, and, due for release in 2009, Promises In Death and Kindred In Death.
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