Born: 1950

Birthplace: Silver Spring, Maryland

Tomfolio Bio

http://www.tomfolio.com/AuthorInfo/authors/NoraRoberts.asp

Born into a family of readers, Nora had never known a time that she wasn't reading or making up stories. During the now famous blizzard, she pulled out a pencil and notebook and began to write down one of those stories. It was there that a career was born. Several manuscripts and rejections later, her first book, Irish Thoroughbred, was published by Silhouette in 1981.

Nora met her second husband, Bruce Wilder, when she hired him to build bookshelves. They were married in July 1985. Since that time, they've expanded their home, traveled the world and opened a bookstore together.

Through the years, Nora has always been surrounded by men. Not only was she the youngest in her family, but she was also the only girl. She has raised two sons. Having spent her life surrounded by men has given Ms. Roberts a fairly good view of the workings of the male mind, which is a constant delight to her readers. It was, she's been quoted as saying, a choice between figuring men out or running away screaming.

Nora is a member of several writers groups and has won countless awards from her colleagues and the publishing industry.

Writers Write 1998 interview with Nora Roberts

http://www.writerswrite.com/journal/jun98/roberts.htm

Snippets

"The Blizzard of '79, two small children, no morning kindergarten, endless games of Candyland and short supply of chocolate. All of these things and events led up to me writing my first book."

"I find I use the Internet more and more. It's just an invaluable tool. I do most of my research on the Net now -- and certainly do the bulk of my communicating through email."

Bookreporter Bio

With Past Interview

http://www.bookreporter.com/authors/au-roberts-nora.asp

Snippets

"The remarkable Ms. Roberts did not become a success overnight. By the time her first novel, IRISH THOROUGHBRED, was published in 1981, she already had three years of hard work behind her and several rejected manuscripts languishing in drawers."

"TBR: When you write a series, do you plan it out before even writing the first book, or do you let the characters decide if they will reappear in later stories?

NR: It's both. As I said, the trilogies are conceived that way. I don't know the stories, specifically, in book two or three when I'm writing book one. I know the characters who will be highlighted, and the thread that will be woven through all three books. But I don't know, not exactly, what's going to happen in each case. For Silhouette, I sometimes plan to do a series. Other times, it just grows that way. The MacGregors was originally planned as one book. But I fell in love with them."

Barnes & Noble Bio

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/writers/writerdetails.asp?userid=eW37Xu1DY7&cid=881767#bio

"Roberts sued fellow writer Janet Dailey in 1997, accusing her of plagiarizing numerous passages of her work over a period of years. Dailey paid a settlement and publicly apologized, blaming stress and a psychological disorder for her misconduct."

"Two Mercedes -- a Kompressor convertible and an M-Class SUV -- and a Chrysler PT Cruiser are parked outside the rural Keedysville, Maryland, home Roberts shares with her husband. Inside, several gauzy photographs of nude models hang above the bed in the ground-floor master bedroom, and a rendition of the Casablanca movie poster -- with the couple painted in as Ilsa and Rick -- is prominent above the fireplace. Three ebullient dogs and one gnarled old mutt track in dirt and litter the house with deer bones that they've found outside."

"Since moving here twenty-nine years ago, Roberts has divorced her first husband, raised their two sons (Dan, now twenty-nine, lives with his wife down the lane; Jason, twenty-six, is just over an hour away) and remarried. She has also added on a few rooms and an indoor pool; a few years ago, she bought twenty adjoining acres so she could continue to shoo deer out of the garden in her underwear without worrying about neighbors. She and her husband own a tiny bookshop in nearby Boonsboro, but Roberts spends most of her time in an upstairs office where she types, smokes and drinks diet colas eight hours a day, five days a week. It's a routine that's produced an average of seven books a year since 1981, many of them bestsellers."