In the late 1980s and early 1990s, however, publishers began to fear that the contemporary romance market was "dead", and Robards was asked to write only historicals. After the publication of To Love a Man, Robards's new publisher contracted her to write two novels per year, one a historical romance and the other contemporary romantic suspense. Within the next several years, Robards had three additional historical romances published, including Sea Fire, the sequel to Island Flame, before To Love a Man was officially released.
The book sold quickly to a different publisher and became the true launchpad for her writing career. She finished this second book, the contemporary romantic suspense To Love a Man, in three months. To pay her bills, she took a job in an orthodontic clinic, writing a new novel in the ladies' room at the clinic while on her lunch break. Undeterred, Robards dropped out of law school to pursue her writing career. After three weeks, her novel was no longer available on bookstore shelves, and her publisher was reluctant to purchase any further work without seeing the sales figures for the current book. Career Īt the time that Robards's debut novel was published, the typical paperback historical romance novel had a shelf life of only three weeks. This debut novel was published in 1981, when Robards was in her early 20s. Although her professor and classmates laughed at her choice of subject matter, those 50 pages became the basis for her first book, Island Flame. After researching what types of books were selling well, Robards chose to write a historical romance, not realizing that she would be required to read her work aloud to the class. Her first attempts at writing a novel came while she was attending the University of Kentucky taking a graduate-level creative writing class, when the professor challenged each student to write 50 pages that could be published. Several weeks later she received a check for $100, and her entry was featured in the December 1973 Reader's Digest.
She quickly penned and submitted a two-paragraph story. As a teenager working part-time for her orthodontist father, Robards saw a Reader's Digest solicitation for funny anecdotes. Karen Robards sold her first story in 1973. Her work has been translated into seventeen languages, and has won multiple awards. After first gaining recognition for her historical romances, Robards became one of the first historical romance novelists to successfully make the switch to contemporary romantic suspense. Karen Robards (born August 24, 1954, in Louisville, Kentucky) is a best-selling author of over fifty novels.
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