And they were all writing the great American novel and I had written The Pirate's Woman. What I didn't know was that he was going to ask us to read it aloud. I wrote the first 50 pages of what turned out to be my first book.

I mean they've got shelves and shelves of them.' So I picked up a couple of them and thought, 'Well, these are really good.

So I went to the book store and said 'What's publishable?' This was about 1979 when romances were really big, and they had shelf after shelf of romance novels. And the professor asked us to write 50 pages of something publishable. No way!īut I took a creative writing course when I was in law school. And I wasn't gonna be caught dead carrying a book that said Sweet Savage Love on it. I was in law school and had never read a romance novel because I thought I was too intellectual to read romance. When you start out in romance, you'd better do what everyone else is doing or you won't get published. Millions of readers have come to love Robards' work since Island Flame was published in 1981. Enough, in fact, to make Robards one of the few writers in her genre whose titles consistently make The New York Times bestseller list. A disciplined writer, she works from eight in the morning until two in the afternoon each day to produce the novels that millions of readers loves so well. The family lives on a small acreage outside of Louisville where Robards does her writing in a carriage house behind the family home. Robards and Doug, her husband of 22 years, have three sons aged two, seven and 14. Earlier in her career Robards wrote two books a year, and though now she is only contractually bound to do one, she feels as though she could do more. Fast-paced romances with elements of mystery and intrigue, Robards plots move nearly as quickly as the books themselves leave the stores. A native of Kentucky, her voice is full of the American South: pleasing, smoky tones in no hurry to get anyplace fast. Robards is full of surprises and pleasant contradictions.

But Robards talent - and her career - sometimes work in mysterious ways.

Robards denies any connection - even a fictitious one - between Clinton and the philandering senator that's married to the star of The Senator's Wife. Not only is the novel political in theme, but a wayward senatorial husband is said to be, doing a Clinton when fighting back from the bad press that would otherwise ruin his career. It was, for Robards, a joyous bit of timing: one that hasn't hurt the book's sales any, either. In an eerie stroke of timing, Robards' The Senator's Wife was released in the same spring week that the name Monica Lewinsky flew into the public eye. There are likely people in Washington wondering where Karen Robards got her crystal ball.

Desire in the sun by karen robards