Nora Roberts was born in Silver Springs, Maryland, the youngest of five children.  She married young and worked briefly as a legal secretary – “the worst ever”.  After her two sons were born, she became a stay at home mom and immersed herself into gardening, canning, stitching and knitting.

Her road to writing began during the February blizzard of 1979.  Stranded at home with her two young sons and a lack of chocolate, she was looking for some non-child related entertainment.  Coming from a family of readers, she got a notebook and started writing down a story that was in her head.  She knew then that writing was the thing she was supposed to do.

She started writing category romance (also known as “series”), since she had just started reading Harlequin romances.  At the time, Harlequin had mainly British authors and was the only publisher of category romances.  All of her manuscripts were rejected.

In 1980, she heard of a new publisher, Silhouette, who was looking for American authors to write category romances and in 1981, they bought Nora’s first manuscript, Irish Thoroughbred.

In July 1985, Nora married her second husband – a local carpenter she hired to build some shelves for her home.  He went on to build many things in her home – including a solid marriage.

In 1987, she began writing single title books for Bantam. In 1992, she moved to writing single title hardcovers as well as original paperbacks for Putnam under the name of Nora Roberts and J.D. Robb.

In the early years, she wrote when she could squeeze in the time between her sons’ school time and activities.  Now she spends 8 hours a day, every day, writing.  She has written over 200 books.  When she’s not writing, she tries to exercise in her pool or elliptical trainer and she is an avid gardener.

Nora’s husband, Bruce Wilder, owns a bookstore named Turn the Page Bookstore and Café in nearby Boonsboro, Maryland.  Directly across the street was an old, run down hotel which Nora and her husband bought in 2007. They began renovating it into a bed and breakfast called Inn BoonsBoro.  This was not an easy undertaking.  In February 2008, the Inn caught fire and was completely destroyed, and many buildings on the block were damaged. Undaunted, they started from scratch and in February 2009, the Inn opened to rave reviews.  This experience inspired The Inn BoonsBoro Trilogy.  The titles of this trilogy are:  The Next Always, The Last Boyfriend, The PerfectHope.

Some fun facts:

1.  Since 1999, every Nora Roberts and J.D. Robb book has made the New York Times bestseller list.  Fifty-three have debuted at number one.
2. Celebrity in Death is the 34^th book in the series.
3. She is the third author to sell more than one million Kindle books.
4. Her books are published in over 34 countries.
5. If you place her books from top to bottom, they would stretch from New York to Los Angeles 18 times.
6. Many of Nora’s books have been made into movies shown on Lifetime television.
7. Nora was one of the first authors to communicate via the web when she launched her website in 1996.

Her latest book as Nora Roberts is Whiskey Beach and as J.D. Robb, the title is Calculated In Death and are available at the Cheshire Library.