how a writer was born ~ a brief biography

Nora Roberts is a pseudonym of Eleanor Wilder, who also writes under the name J.D. Robb. When Nora is asked how she started writing, she says it was fate. You see Nora lives in the country in western Maryland and in February 1979 there was a blizzard. With the endless snow, Nora and her two young sons were stuck. She even confesses to weeping every time it was announced that morning kindergarten was canceled. An at home mom, her life was revolved around her kids and crafts. She did ceramics, needlepoint, embroidery, baked her own bread and even canned her own jelly. But the Blizzard of '79 changed everything.

It was a matter of simple survival. Anything else would have been murder-suicide. [grin] She decided to take one of the many stories inside her head and write it down. Of course once she started she was hooked and wondered why she'd waited so long. Writing in a notebook with a Number Two pencil, it was important to Nora to be portable in those early years. That way she could remain in the same room with her boys and prevent the oldest from sacrificing his younger brother to whatever demons were possessing him at the time. She used the time between naps and during school hours to write and transcribed her scribbles on a little portable typewriter in the kitchen.

Most of Nora's books explore the relationships between families. Like most of her readers, I sometimes I'm shocked but how well she writes her male characters. But it shouldn't really surprise anyone, Nora is the only girl with four older brothers and at home she has only sons. Nora knows men. But being a woman she grasps the heart and soul that drives all women. With all her success Nora has remained the same feisty woman and in her own words stubborn.

Nora has been dragged kicking and screaming into the computer age. In fact, it was through the computer that Nora traveled to Montana, without ever having to leave her office, to research "Montana Sky". It was during the blizzard of '96, watching the snow fall and fall and fall, listeningto the announcements of school closings day after day, that she was reminded of the snowstorm seventeen years ago. She was grateful because without it she might still be canning jelly.

Nora Roberts has not only won the hearts of her fans but has received several RITA awards and is widely acknowledged as one the world's great romance writers.

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