1. Nora Roberts was born in Silver Spring Maryland, the youngest of five children. 2. Through the years, Nora has always been surrounded by men. Not only was she the youngest in her family, but she was also the only girl. She has raised two sons. Having spent her life surrounded by men has given Ms. Roberts a fairly good view of the workings of the male mind, which is a constant delight to her readers. It was, she's been quoted as saying, a choice between figuring men out or running away screaming. 3. Nora is a member of several writers groups and has won countless awards from her colleagues and the publishing industry. 4. Home for Nora Roberts for the past 30 years has been on the top of a hill in western Maryland. 5. When she’s not writing, Nora tends to her gardens. She recovers from her annual spring book tour by ruthlessly weeding, planting and mulching, and enlisting her family to help out. Her constant battles with marauding deer have made it into her books and entertained her fans over the years. There’s an herb garden off the kitchen, a hillside of tiger lilies and hundreds of annuals throughout the property, giving Nora ample opportunity to still play in the dirt. 6. Since she started writing stories down in notebooks 28 years ago, Nora Roberts has used discipline and talent in equal measure. Early in her career, she worked her writing in between her sons’ pre-school and nap schedules every day. When they were both in school full time, her writing schedule mirrored theirs, although she put in extra hours over the weekend. Now, after 160 books and countless bestsellers, she writes eight hours a day -- every day. 7. Before she started writing, Nora Roberts was a woman in search of a creative outlet. Staying at home with her two small sons, she was the ultimate earth mother, gardening, canning fruits and vegetable, making her son’s clothes, stitching and knitting. “I macramed two hammocks,” she admits now. “I needed help.”. 8. Now that her sons are grown, Nora looks back at that February Blizzard as a blessing in disguise. “I started writing as a way to save my sanity,” she says, “and I fell into a job that I love.” 9. Since 1999, every book published under the Nora Roberts name was a New York Times bestseller. 10. There are enough Nora Roberts books in print to fill the seats of Giants Stadium nearly 4,000 times. 11. If you place all Nora’s books top to bottom, they would stretch across the United States from Los Angeles to New York City 10 times. 12. Nora’s books have spent a combined 116 weeks at the number one spot on the New York Times bestseller list!. 13. In the time you take to read this section, another 21 Nora Roberts books were sold.