Other articles by Ben Nuckols:

Art museum celebrates tattoos Prosecution rests in trial of Army Ranger accused of killing fellow Ranger Former 'Simpsons' writer scores with teen-life satire Baltimore, land of crab cakes, ranked as fittest city Real deal No scrub: he's a director now Culkin survives fame

Health Care
FRONT OFFICE Trades/Construction
Lectra-Serv, Inc
Electricians & Helpers General
Prestige maintenance USA
Custodian Trades/Construction
Pioneer Landscaping
Yard Person/Loader Operator Administrative & Professional
Tucson Symphony
Teleservices Sales/Courtesy Rep Mechanical
Pioneer Landscaping
Diesel Fleet Mechanic Production and Manufacturing
Pioneer Landscaping
Crushing Crew

Endless reserves of imagination aren't all it takes to write 165 novels. It also requires the discipline of a drill sergeant. Nora Roberts has arranged her life carefully, paring down the clutter and distractions that would threaten to dull her laserlike focus.

It's hard to argue with the results.

Roberts is in the middle of a typically busy year. Her latest romantic suspense book, "Angels Fall," came out July 11. Later this year will bring the release of a futuristic crime novel, written under the pseudonym J.D. Robb, and three romantic fantasy paperbacks, "The Circle Trilogy," in successive months. There's also a new J.D. Robb novella published as part of an anthology.

How does she do it? Is she some kind of machine?

Roberts laughs.

"I often say I'm not a machine. I think I have a really strong work ethic, plus I really love the work. I think if you love what you do, you do a lot of it. I have a lot of discipline … and I have a fast pace," the 55-year-old author says.

Roberts, a trim, energetic redhead with a slight smoker's rasp, would rather be writing than sitting for an interview. Still, during a morning visit to her tranquil home in the mountains of western Maryland, she is warm and accommodating, discussing her life and work at length and even providing a tour.

A lifelong Maryland resident, Roberts was born in Silver Spring — the youngest of five children and the only girl. Her upbringing shaped her work ethic.

Roberts treats writing like a regular job. She works Monday through Friday, eight hours a day — sometimes more. And she doesn't sit around waiting to be inspired.

"You're going to be unemployed if you really think you just have to sit around and wait for the muse to land on your shoulder. That's not the way I work. I build a story," she says.

While there are few signs of extravagance in Roberts' home, she has clearly made a handsome living. Each book published under the Nora Roberts name since 1999 has been a best-seller; there are 280 million Roberts books in print. She is published in 35 countries. Her books sold 12 million copies in 2005, according to Publishers Weekly.

Her process requires plenty of confidence and intuition. She doesn't write outlines or map out her plots in advance. She comes up with a key incident, character or setting and works from there.

For "Angels Fall," the idea was a woman who witnesses a murder but is too far away to intervene and too isolated to cry for help. She then finds that her claim is met with skepticism. Roberts set the story in a small town in Wyoming, in the shadow of the Grand Tetons.

"That's how I build," she says. "What's the situation? And here is basically the setting I'm thinking of. … What is she doing there? Why did she come there? Did she live there? Did she move there? Is she visiting, passing through … and why doesn't anybody believe her? Oh, well maybe nobody believes her because she's not only new in town, but she's a little bit crazy. Oh, that's good!"

Once she's answered some of those basic questions, she starts from Page One and allows the plot, the characters and the texture to develop as she goes along. She writes a first draft, then a second, then a third. And she never works on more than one book at a time.

Roberts started writing during a blizzard in 1979, when she was trying to stave off boredom while snowed in with her two young sons. Her first novel, "Irish Thoroughbred," was published in 1981. Since then, she's never relaxed her pace, averaging more than six books a year.

She got her start writing short romance paperbacks, published by Silhouette. Now she hops from suspense to police procedural to science fiction to fantasy, and all her books are published by the Penguin Group, divided according to genre among several imprints. But every Roberts book retains a romantic story line.

"I'm always going to write a relationship in it, because that's what I like to read, too, plus that's reader expectation," Roberts says.

Some romance fans squirm at the violence in her J.D. Robb titles. The pseudonym was created at the publisher's suggestion in 1995 to better distinguish her new series of hard-boiled, futuristic detective novels. After the series gained popularity, Penguin revealed in 2001 that Robb was Roberts, and her real name has appeared on the Robb titles since then.

Roberts' boundless powers of creation emerge from a humdrum routine at the home where she's lived for nearly her entire adult life. Her first husband's family bought the property, on a wooded hillside off a winding country road, and when they divorced, Roberts remained. She married her second husband, Bruce Wilder, in 1985. They met when she hired Wilder, a carpenter, to build bookshelves.

She also keeps her family close by. She and Wilder own a nearby bookstore, Turn the Page Books; Wilder runs it full time. Her older son, who lives down the road from Roberts with his wife and two children, owns a local Italian restaurant. Roberts' daughter-in-law works at the bookstore. Roberts has book signings at Turn the Page but otherwise leads a low-key existence as the most famous resident of her small community.

"I'm writing commercial fiction. I'm writing something that's supposed to give someone a good time. There may be horrible stuff that happens within it. … But in the end, somebody will win," she said.