About Nora Roberts
Nora Roberts was born Nora Marie Robertson on October 10th, 1950, in the town of Silver Spring, Maryland and she was the only girl in a family of seven. Born to parents with Irish ancestors, she was introduced to books at an early age as both of her parents loved to read and she inherited their love of reading. Even though Nora Roberts always enjoyed making up her own stories in her mind, she didn’t do any writing when she was a child, other than the required writing for school. She credits her discipline to the nuns which taught at her Catholic school. She later transferred to a public school during her sophomore year. That is where she met her first husband, a man by the name of Ronald Aufdem-Brinke. They were married right after she graduated from high school in 1968.
The couple settled in Keedysville, Maryland and Ronald worked at his dad’s sheet metal shop before he joined her parents at their lighting business. Nora Roberts stayed at home with their sons, named Dan and Jason and spent a lot of time doing things such as ceramics and sewing clothes for their children. Unfortunately, the marriage did not last.
Nora Roberts met Bruce Wilder, who worked as a carpenter and would become her second husband when she hired him to build some bookshelves for her. The wedding took place in July of 1985. Bruce owns and runs a bookstore located in Boonsboro, MD named “Turn the Page Books”. The couple also had ownership of the Boone Hotel and it was being renovated when a fire destroyed in February of 2008. After millions of dollars in renovations, Inn Boonsboro opened its doors on February 17th, 2009.
Nora Roberts holds true to the belief that you have to have discipline to be a writer. You cannot sit around, waiting for your muse to speak to you. She writes 8 hours daily, every day, even when she is on vacation. She doesn’t start out with a summary or outline. She instead envisions a key character, setting or incident. She then will write a first draft, which is short and only has the basic elements of the story. The second draft is when she adds more details and information about the characters. A third look over is the charm before she sends it off to her agent. Lots of times she will write trilogies so that she can stick with the characters longer.
Since she does not like to fly, Nora Roberts does a lot of the research she needs on the Internet. Despite her dislike for flying, she does own property in Ireland and will often go there to visit. Some of the novels that she has written are set in Ardmore, County Waterford.
She started writing back in 1979, out of boredom and quickly found that she loved writing. Her first manuscripts were submitted to Harlequin, which rejected them, saying that they'd found the American author for them. One would wonder what they are thinking now.
Learn more at the Nora Roberts website. | 
