Nora Roberts

One of the most successful American authors of the present day, Nora Roberts was born as Eleanor Marie Robertson on October 10, 1950. She has written more than 225 romance novels. She has also written under pseudonyms like J. D. Robb for the series, “In Death,” Jill March and as Sarah Hardesty.

Nora was the first author to be included in the “Romance Writers of America Hall of Fame.” Till 2011, she has been on the No.1 spot as a writer for 176 weeks, and a total of 861 weeks on “The New York Times Best Seller list.” Born in Silver Spring, Maryland, Roberts is Irish and is the youngest of five children. She was always an avid reader with an imaginative mind. As a child, she only wrote articles for her school and had a great sense of discipline.

She shifted to Montgomery Blair High School where she met her first husband, Ronald Aufdem-Brinke, whom she married in 1968, after she graduated from high school. During her first marriage, being a mother of two, Robert spent her time as a homemaker and had not taken up writing as a profession. However, their marriage ended in 1983. It was only after Roberts met her second husband, Bruce Wilders, she started writing as a profession.

Her husband owned a bookstore in Boonsboro, Maryland. The Wilders also owned the historic Boone Hotel, in which the suites were inspired by and named for literary romantic couples with happy endings. Probably this was the source of inspiration for Roberts! She started writing one winter morning when it was snow covered, and neither did she have to drive her children off to school nor she had much work at home. Rather, she started writing her first story that day. Her manuscript had been rejected many times, probably, at that time for the American writer, Janet Dailey, with whom she later faced a plagiarism controversy.

Dailey later confessed to having stolen some of the works of Roberts. In 1980, Roberts started writing books for “Silhouette” Books, and wrote her first novel, “Irish Thoroughbred” and took up the name as- “Nora Roberts.” Between 1982 and 1984, Roberts wrote 23 novels for Silhouette. She was famous for writing romantic thriller stories. In 1987, she took her writing career to a new notch by writing single title books for Bantam. Five years later, she started working with “Putnam” to write single title hardcovers as well as original paperbacks. She reached the hardcover-bestseller list with her fourth hardcover release, Montana Sky (1996).

While in Putnam, the company realized that they could not keep up with Robert’s profile and hence, she adopted the pseudonym of “J.D. Robb” and kept writing romantic thrillers. She wrote the series “In death” using this name. She is a perfectionist and after finishing the first draft of her novel, she goes to the beginning and adds on to the colour, texture and finer details of the novel. Thereafter, she sends it to her agent. She writes the trilogy series one after another so that she can keep in sync with the characters.

Roberts is a great fan of baseball as well. All of Robert’s works are notice worthy and many of them have been taken up for screen adaptation like Magic Moments, Sanctuary, Angels Fall, Montana Sky, Blue Smoke, Carolina Moon, Northern Lights, Midnight Bayou, High Noon, Tribute and Carnal Innocence.

She received many awards in her entire career. She received Golden Medallion Awards for “The Heart’s Victory,” “Untamed,” “This Magic Moment,” “Opposites Attract,” “A matter of choice,” and “Brazen Virtue.” She received RITA Awards for many of her brilliant Romantic Suspense like “Nightshift.” “Divine Evil,” “Nightshade,” “Private Scandals,” “Hidden Riches,” “Born in Ice,” “Carolina Moon,” “Birthright,” and “Tribute.” She has also won Quill awards for “ Angels Fall” and “Blue Smoke.” As J.D. Robb, she has won RITA Awards for “Survivor in Death” and “New York to Dallas.” She is one of the most talented writers the world has got in the recent years.