Nora Roberts
| Nora Roberts | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Birth name | Eleanor Marie Robertson |
| Born | October 10, 1950 Silver Spring, Maryland, U.S. |
| Occupation | Novelist |
| Pseudonyms | J. D. Robb, Jill March, Sarah Hardesty (UK) |
| Genre | Romance, romantic suspense, police procedural/science fiction |
| Spouse(s) | Ronald Aufdem-Brinke (m. 1968; div. 1985); Bruce Wilder (m. 1985) |
| Children | Daniel, Jason |
| Notable works | In Death series, Born In trilogy, Chesapeake Bay saga |
Nora Roberts (born Eleanor Marie Robertson on October 10, 1950, in Silver Spring, Maryland) is an American author and one of the best-selling novelists in publishing history, with more than 250 books published and over 400 million copies in print worldwide. She writes contemporary and romantic-suspense novels under her own name, and writes a long-running futuristic police-procedural series, In Death, under the pseudonym J. D. Robb. Within the Canon of Nora, she is the central author whose catalog — under all of her names — this wiki documents.
Early life
Roberts was born the youngest of five children (and the only girl) to Bernard Edward Robertson and Eleanor Harris Robertson, who co-founded the lighting company R&R Lighting. She grew up in Silver Spring, Maryland, attending Catholic schools before graduating from Montgomery Blair High School. She has described her family as avid readers and herself as "an Irishwoman through and through," reflecting her Irish ancestry.
Roberts married her high school sweetheart, Ronald Aufdem-Brinke, in 1968, and the couple settled in Keedysville, Maryland, where she raised their two sons, Daniel and Jason, while working various clerical jobs. The couple divorced in January 1985.
Path to writing
Roberts had no formal writing career before 1979. During a blizzard that February, snowed in with her two young sons, she began writing down a story she had been composing in her head — the manuscript that would eventually become her first published novel. After a string of rejections from Harlequin, the manuscript was picked up by Silhouette Books, a new line formed in part to publish American authors Harlequin had turned down. Irish Thoroughbred was published in 1981 under the name "Nora Roberts" — a shortened form of her birth name, chosen because she assumed, as a new author, that all romance writers used pen names.
Career
Silhouette and early category romance
Between 1982 and 1984, Roberts wrote 23 novels for Silhouette's various imprints (Silhouette Romance, Special Edition, Desire, and Intrigue). In 1985, Playing the Odds, the first book in her MacGregor family series, became an immediate bestseller.
Move to single-title fiction
In 1987, Roberts began writing single-title novels for Bantam. In 1992, she moved to Putnam, where she would remain for the rest of her career, writing original hardcovers and paperbacks. Her fourth Putnam hardcover, Montana Sky (1996), reached the hardcover bestseller lists and was honored by the Romance Writers of America with its first Centennial Award, marking Roberts' 100th novel.
J. D. Robb and the In Death series
In 1995, seeking an outlet for the sheer pace at which she was writing, Roberts launched a futuristic police-procedural series under the pseudonym J. D. Robb — initials drawn from her sons' names, Jason and Daniel. The first book, Naked in Death, introduced NYPSD Lieutenant Eve Dallas and the enigmatic Irish-born billionaire Roarke, set in a mid-21st-century New York City. Neither Roberts nor her publisher acknowledged the pseudonym at first, allowing the series to build its own following independent of her name recognition as a romance author.
The In Death series has gone on to become one of the longest-running series in popular fiction, with dozens of novels and novellas published, and continues today as a flagship of the Canon of Nora catalog.
Other pseudonyms
Roberts has occasionally published under other names: as Jill March for a magazine story titled "Melodies of Love," and as Sarah Hardesty for the UK release of her Born In trilogy, at her British publisher's request.
Writing style and themes
Roberts is known for grounding romance in relatable, everyday characters rather than glamour, frequently centering self-possessed, capable women. As J. D. Robb, her In Death novels blend hard-edged police procedural plotting with near-future speculative technology and the long-arc romantic relationship between Dallas and Roarke. She has described her working method as highly disciplined, typically writing several hours a day, five days a week, and completing a novel roughly every forty-five working days.
Awards and honors
- First inductee, Romance Writers of America (RWA) Hall of Fame (1986)
- RWA Lifetime Achievement Award (1997) — renamed the RWA Nora Roberts Lifetime Achievement Award in 2008 in her honor
- Numerous RITA Awards across categories including romantic suspense and contemporary single title
- Quill Awards recognition, including for Angels Fall and Blue Smoke
- Named one of TIME's 100 Most Influential People (2007)
Screen adaptations
Several novels have been adapted for television, most extensively by Lifetime Television. In 2007, Lifetime aired four adaptations — Angels Fall, Montana Sky, Blue Smoke, and Carolina Moon — marking the first time the network had adapted multiple works by a single author. Four more adaptations followed in 2009: Northern Lights, Midnight Bayou, High Noon, and Tribute.
Personal life
Roberts met her second husband, Bruce Wilder, when she hired him to build bookshelves in her home; the couple married on July 6, 1985. They later opened a bookstore, Turn the Page Bookstore, in Boonsboro, Maryland, and went on to purchase and restore a historic hotel in the town, reopening it as the Inn BoonsBoro in 2009.
Philanthropy
Roberts is a longtime philanthropic supporter of literacy, the arts, and humanitarian causes through the Nora Roberts Foundation. The foundation also endowed the Nora Roberts Center for American Romance at McDaniel College, which supports academic scholarship on the romance novel as a literary form.
