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“I took every cliche you have ever read in a novel and I stuffed it in that 55,000-word book,” says the 69-year-old, who is friendly, steely and enjoyably sweary. But writing one of these short, formulaic romances was harder than she had thought. Having young children meant she’d gorged herself on Mills & Boon romances in the rare moments she could grab to read (“I’d think a lot of times: ‘the heroine is a little wimpy’ or ‘the guy is a total ass’ but it was what I needed from my reading fix during nap time”) and thought she knew what she was doing.Īs a child – the youngest of five – she’d thought that “everybody made up stories in their heads”. She has, she says later, read every book Roberts has ever written, from supernatural-tinged series such as the Guardians trilogy to the romantic suspense of The Obsession this is some feat.īack in 1979, Roberts hadn’t quite cracked the winning formula.

One booked a flight to Ireland the second the event was announced. We’re talking in the stunning setting of Ashford Castle in Ireland, the inspiration for her bestselling Cousins O’Dwyer series – witchcraft romance horses – where almost 200 readers are due for an event later that day. Known by her legions of fans as La Nora, she’s a perennial New York Times bestseller who has sold more than 500m books worldwide. Today, Roberts is the author of more than 220 novels, publishing at least five a year. I was desperately searching for a creative outlet and as soon as I started that was it.” Before that I’d sewed, baked bread, crocheted, macramed two hammocks.

“I thought, I’m going nuts here, so I’ll take one of the stories out of my head and write it down,” she says. She picked up a notebook and had a go at writing a romance novel. N ora Roberts was a young stay-at-home mum with two small boys when 3ft of snow hit Maryland in February 1979, and the family was stuck inside.