Profile:She writes under several pseudonyms, fuelled by chocolate and sexual fantasies, and has cornered the market in bodice-ripping novels set on the Old Sod - yet you wouldn't recognise her in the local shop, writes Kate Holmquist
She sells 21 books per minute. She's had 147 books on the New York Times bestseller list. There are almost 300 million copies of her 180-plus novels in print (enough to lay end-to-end from New York to Los Angeles 10 times). Her name inspires awe and wonder among the publishing community. Last year, three of her novels sold more than two million copies each - a figure unmatched by any other writer, none of whom reached two million for one novel last year, never mind three. And she topped the list for the one-million sellers, too; her dominance of the 750,000 and 500,000-selling lists are hardly worth a mention.
Nora and the novel factory is a phenomenon. This shockingly prolific writer earns €45.5 million per year, leaving Dan Brown, Stephen King, James Patterson and Sue Grafton in the shade. And she never writes without Diet Pepsi, pretzels and chocolate by her side, while her Irish parents and grandparents' tales of romantic Irish heroes people her imagination.
She never went to university, but always loved stories and brazened it out: "I'm Irish and a good liar. That seems to do the job," she has said.
There's a shrine to her in Ardmore, Co Waterford, where the fishermen who drink in An Tobar pub became the rippling-muscled studs in Irish Hearts, the first of her two best-selling Irish trilogies featuring the Gallaghers (named after the now-deceased former publican at An Tobar, Kevin Gallagher). Rugged, sensitive, poetic men they were, and the template for many other heroes to follow, not just in Roberts's books but throughout the genre. Nobody writes manly men like she does, they say in the book industry.
In An Tobar they say: "She wrote about relationships with fellas. A lot would be married and not tending to put their names out there." Nora Roberts is all about passion, sex, adventure (she has said she doesn't "do" virgins) and the guys in the pub blush at the notion she was basing her chronicle of the Gallagher family on them at the time, though Kevin Gallagher, I'm told, was rather chuffed.
American tourists flock to Ardmore every year to see the holy well, St Declan's, that Roberts campaigned to save, and to pay their respects at the An Tobar shrine (a picture of the pub, an article from the Dungarvan Observer and the three books of the Gallagher trilogy, Heart of the Sea, Jewel of the Sun and Tears of the Moon, all of which feature An Tobar, renamed "Gallagher's").
This week, they can add a framed copy of Time magazine to the shrine, because the Irish queen of romance fiction, as she is known in the genre, was named this week as one of Time's 100 most influential people in the world, and the seventh most influential in arts and entertainment.
Yet if you ask anybody in Ireland outside Ardmore about Nora Roberts, the answer is, inevitably, "Nora who?". Not even her Irish publicist knew much about her Irish connection, despite the current radio advertising campaign for Angels Fall, because Roberts's private time in Ireland is time away from the publicity machine. Roberts regards public appearances as the only legal torture still condoned, but she broke her silence this week to tell The Irish Times: "I love the feel of Ireland, the warmth and humour of the people, the light, the look, the music. I feel a connection when I'm there, in much the same way I feel connected to my own home. I'm looking forward to sharing that with the rest of my family."
Roberts is coming here this summer with her husband, two sons, daughter-in-law, younger son's fiancee and her two grandchildren, but they won't be staying on the 20 acres she owns overlooking a lake in Tulla, Co Clare. She leases that to a farmer who grazes horses on it and doesn't plan to develop it.
The Time accolade comes as no surprise to her loyal Irish readers, who regard Roberts almost as a friend. They can expect at least seven novels a year from their favourite author and call themselves Noraholics. Irish booksellers say she's gold dust. They say she is read by the sort of female reader aged 13-103 (plus the occasional male trucker prone to breaking into tears on a lay-by) who comes into the bookshop looking only for Nora, and, when the reader hears that there's another two months to wait, exhales a disappointed sigh that booksellers love to hear because they know she'll be back again and again to add to the coffers of a romance novel industry that's worth €25 million every year in Ireland and turns over $1.2 billion (€886 million) a year in the US.
Britney, Paris, Nicole, Angelina - pick up your toyboys and go home, girls.
It all started for the glamorously red-headed Eleanor Marie Robertson, born the youngest of five in Silver Spring, Maryland, in 1950, when she had a desperate housewife's moment in 1979. In the middle of a legendary blizzard that left her stranded alone in mountainous western Maryland with no four-wheel drive and two young sons, she went crazy as the chocolate supply ran out. Until the blizzard, she had poured her hyper-energy and sexual frustration into crafts addiction - embroidering little bees on her sons' overalls and macrame-ing hammocks - before she realised she needed help. The cavalry arrived in the form of a pencil and a spiral notebook. As soon as she began to write, she knew she'd found her vocation.
AN IRISHWOMAN THROUGH and through, both her parents had Irish ancestors and some crossed, as her parents were third cousins with parents named Sweeney who were third cousins, Sweeney on both sides, most from Cork, some from Galway with a smattering of Cunnanes from Cork and Hardestys from Cork and Galway. When she began to write her first novel, her imagination naturally turned to the stories she'd heard about romantic Ireland. Irish Thoroughbred, which soon became the first romance that Silhouette - now a brand leader - ever published, concerned a sensible but passionate Irish girl who found fulfilment with an American horse breeder. The innocent but strong heroine met the sensitive stud and the formula was set.
With her early novels notching up rejection slips so fast she lost count, Eleanor finally saw Irish Thoroughbred published in 1981; it flew off the shelves and she promptly jettisoned husband number one to find love with soulmate number two: the carpenter who came to build bookshelves for her, tool-belt and all. Reader, she married him and today he busies himself adding extra floors and wings to her house in Hagerstown, Maryland (near Antietam, for you American Civil War fans out there), as well as running a bespoke bookshop, cafe and Internet book-selling business in Boonsboro, Maryland called Turn the Page. Mr Roberts is currently busying himself with doing up two old inns that Nora bought in the historic 18th-century town, which Nora wants to be like stage sets where readers can come with their lovers to relive romantic scenes from her books (she puts it more discreetly, but we're talking Norawood).
After frustrated, snowed-in Eleanor became Nora Roberts, she never took her tool-belt-wearing second husband for granted. She has told interviewers that she has always let him believe he's the hero in every one of her 180-plus books, because "a boy must have his dream".
Over the past 28 years, Nora has developed, as her agent advised, a sound base of readers who are always surprised by her novels - but not too much. She's been credited with single-handedly transforming the contemporary romantic heroine to reflect real life. The girl may be a trucker, but she's a princess underneath. The hero is always a stud with a gentle heart and a discerning nose that can tell Cabernet from Beaujolais. Like comfort food, Nora Roberts is comfort reading, with sales of romance fiction escalating after 9/11 because readers wanted to feel hopeful and safe.
She writes romance very, very well. Hooks you in from the beginning so that you know you're in for a smooth ride in a comfortable, mid-size sedan that will have you feeling aroused, then satiated and ultimately in tune with your inner moral guardian by the last page.
Roberts describes her novels as "reassuring" because they are about relationships, good sex, marriage and families. She celebrates what for her is "the fact that love matters . . . bigger than anger and the basis for all our joy".
IRISH CATHOLIC NUNS with sticks drummed discipline into her in school, instilling a shadow of guilt that Roberts believes is at the core of every hard-working writer. Don't muse about it, just do it, is her philosophy and she writes eight hours per day, every day, writing so fast that publishers began to insist she take on several pseudonyms so that they could market her books in genre categories that she likens to three types of cola - diet, caffeine-free and caffeine-free diet.
The most successful of these new strands is her series of science fiction thrillers by JD Robb (a cobbling together of her sons' names - Jason and Dan - plus a bit of Roberts). Known as the "In Death" series and set in 2058, it's gained her a new audience of male readers.
Four of her books set in the wide open spaces of heartland America are currently becoming TV films on the Lifestyle channel, starring such names as Jacqueline Bisset, Heather Locklear and Diane Ladd.
Her favourite authors are Carl Hiaasen, John Sandford, Sue Grafton, Elizabeth Berg, Stephen King and her "pal" Patricia Gaffney, and she loves to garden and watch TV when she's not writing or travelling. She's reputed to work hard and play hard.
Her pastimes and passions are as daring as those of her readers and she has the knack of going just that little bit further than the average suburban female reader dares to fantasise - without going too far. And wouldn't they all love to be her? Multi-millionaire? Handyman at the ready? Tool-belt on the bedpost? Just hand over the number 2 pencil, please.
The Roberts File
Who is she?
Nora Roberts (56), born Eleanor Marie Robertson, the most prolific and successful writer in the US and probably on the planet, with 21 books sold every minute under various pen-names.
Why is she in the news?
Named by Time magazine as one of the world's 100 most influential people: "Nora Roberts is to love as Masters and Johnson are to sex . . . Readers have had their fantasy lives shaped by her work."
Most appealing characteristic:
She is true to her Irish roots - she has set two trilogies in Ireland, where she owns 20 acres on a lake in Tulla, Co Clare ("my four green fields").
Least appealing characteristic:
Don't even try to compete. For workaholic Roberts, writer's block is just a rumour. Her publishers can't keep up with her.
Most likely to say:
"The rush I get from being on top of the bestseller list is almost better than sex."
Least likely to say:
"Hold the fries." Because, for Roberts, "a day without french fries is like a day without an orgasm".