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Sea Swept (Quinn Brothers Series #1) by Nora Roberts
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(Mass Market Paperback)
- Pub. Date: May 2001
- 352pp
- Sales Rank: 10,218
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Product Details
- Pub. Date: May 2001
- Publisher: Penguin Group (USA) Incorporated
- Format: Mass Market Paperback, 352pp
- Sales Rank: 10,218
- Series: Quinn Brothers Series, #1
- ISBN-13: 9780515121841
- ISBN: 0515121843
Synopsis
A champion boat racer, Cameron Quinn traveled the world spending his winnings on champagne and women. But when his dying father calls him home to care for Seth, a troubled young boy not unlike Cameron once was, his life changes overnight. . .
After years of independence, Cameron has to learn to live with his brothers again, while he struggles with cooking, cleaning, and caring for a difficult boy. Old rivalries and new resentments flare between Cameron and his brothers, but they try to put aside their differences for Seth's sake. In the end, a social worker, as tough as she is beautiful, will decide Seth's fate. She has the power to bring the Quinns together - or tear them apart. . .
Publishers Weekly
Roberts's Dream trilogy involved three women living in a palatial Big Sur mansion. This, the first volume of the Quinn Brothers trilogy, revolves around a trio of strapping, lusty guys in a comfortable home on Maryland's Eastern Shore. Cameron Quinnthe eldest of three abused boys adopted by Ray and Stella Quinnis an adventurer who likes fast boats, fast cars and undemanding women. After Ray is injured in a car accident, Cam flies to his father's deathbed where he promises to look after 10-year-old Seth, for whom Ray has just started adoption proceedings. Anna Spinelli, Seth's social worker, is taken with both Cam's incomparable body and his big heart. Anna brings her own history of abuse to steamy encounters and the reader knows that Cam's pedal-to-the-metal days are numbered. Roberts is one of the great propagandists for family values, home, hearth and children, making them goals that are rewarding and desirable. (Jan.)
More Reviews and RecommendationsBiography
One of the most prolific and popular writers in the world, Nora Roberts (who also writes as her edgier alter-ego J. D. Robb) publishes multiple books a year. Not that it’s enough for her fans, who tear through her unconventional romances. With her trademark mix of fantasy, mystery, and romance, Roberts has created her own genre -- and romance fans are grateful for it!
More About the AuthorCustomer Reviews
- Reader Rating:
- Ratings: 38Reviews: 17
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very, very goodby Anonymous
Reader Rating:
See Detailed Ratings
May 26, 2008: As usual, Nora Roberts does not disappoint with this series. Although I love every one of her books that I have read, I really enjoy it when she writes from a male point of view. The book was really good, and very touching. It doesn't hurt that Cam is just about as sexy as they come, either. I would recommend this series and any other Nora Roberts to anybody.
Amazing!!by Anonymous
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July 28, 2006: this book was amazing!! and i cant wait to read the others in the series!!
Fact File
Name:
Nora Roberts
Also Known As:
J. D. Robb; Sarah Hardesty; Jill March; Eleanor Marie Robertson (birth name)
Current Home:
Keedysville, Maryland
Date of Birth:
1950
Place of Birth:
Silver Spring, Maryland
Awards:
Romance Writers of America Hall of Fame, 1986; Romantic Times Career Achievement Award, 1991; Romance Writers of America Centennial Award, 1997; Romance Writers of America Golden Medallion Award (seven times); Quill Award for Blue Smoke, 2006
Biography
Not only has Nora Roberts written more bestsellers than anyone else in the world (according to Publishers Weekly), she’s also created a hybrid genre of her own: the futuristic detective romance. And that’s on top of mastering every subgenre in the romance pie: the family saga, the historical, the suspense novel. But this most prolific and versatile of authors might never have tapped into her native talent if it hadn't been for one fateful snowstorm.
As her fans well know, in 1979 a blizzard trapped Roberts at home for a week with two bored little kids and a dwindling supply of chocolate. To maintain her sanity, Roberts started scribbling a story -- a romance novel like the Harlequin paperbacks she'd recently begun reading. The resulting manuscript was rejected by Harlequin, but that didn't matter to Roberts. She was hooked on writing. Several rejected manuscripts later, her first book was accepted for publication by Silhouette.
For several years, Roberts wrote category romances for Silhouette -- short books written to the publisher's specifications for length, subject matter and style, and marketed as part of a series of similar books. Roberts has said she never found the form restrictive. "If you write in category, you write knowing there's a framework, there are reader expectations," she explained. "If this doesn't suit you, you shouldn't write it. I don't believe for one moment you can write well what you wouldn't read for pleasure."
Roberts never violated the reader's expectations, but she did show a gift for bringing something fresh to the romance formula. Her first book, Irish Thoroughbred (1981), had as its heroine a strong-willed horse groom, in contrast to the fluttering young nurses and secretaries who populated most romances at the time. But Roberts's books didn't make significant waves until 1985, when she published Playing the Odds, which introduced the MacGregor clan. It was the first bestseller of many.
Roberts soon made a name for herself as a writer of spellbinding multigenerational sagas, creating families like the Scottish MacGregors, the Irish Donovans and the Ukrainian Stanislaskis. She also began working on romantic suspense novels, in which the love story unfolds beneath a looming threat of violence or disaster. She grew so prolific that she outstripped her publishers' ability to print and market Nora Roberts books, so she created an alter ego, J.D. Robb. Under the pseudonym, she began writing romantic detective novels set in the future. By then, millions of readers had discovered what Publishers Weekly called her "immeasurable diversity and talent."
Although the style and substance of her books has grown, Roberts remains loyal to the genre that launched her career. As she says, "The romance novel at its core celebrates that rush of emotions you have when you are falling in love, and it's a lovely thing to relive those feelings through a book."
Good to Know
Roberts still lives in the same Maryland house she occupied when she first started writing -- though her carpenter husband has built on some additions. She and her husband also own Turn the Page Bookstore Café in Boonsboro, Maryland. When Roberts isn't busy writing, she likes to drop by the store, which specializes in Civil War titles as well as autographed copies of her own books.
Roberts sued fellow writer Janet Dailey in 1997, accusing her of plagiarizing numerous passages of her work over a period of years. Dailey paid a settlement and publicly apologized, blaming stress and a psychological disorder for her misconduct.
Feature Interview
Excerpted from the March/April 2002 issue of Book magazine.One afternoon when Nora Roberts was four, her two oldest brothers broke into a violent argument while they were baby-sitting her. "I peeked out of the bedroom, and they're beating the hell out of each other," Roberts says. Then her mother walked in, with a grocery bag in each hand. "One bag goes here, one bag goes there, she steps right in the middle of these two six-foot guys and she goes, boom, bam. Two backhands. And both of them go, 'Maaaaaawwwmm.' I thought right then, There's the power. She's the power."
Elly, as her family still calls her, the youngest of five and the only girl, was a quick study. "She bossed her brothers around," says her mother, Eleanor; today, "her brothers have got her on a throne." Roberts reigns over more than her family, which now includes her husband and two sons. Since her writing debut in 1981, she has helped lead American romance away from its clichés of simpering heroines and heroic rapists toward more complex characters and contemporary, multifaceted plots. Of course, sex -- passionate, tender, delayed, avoided, forced, in castles, in fields, in treetops -- continues to be a central hook. And often, the prose remains purple; Roberts herself has a propensity for phrases like "she rocked them both toward madness." But the genre with which her name is synonymous is one -- the only one -- that always puts women at the center of the universe.
***
Two Mercedes -- a Kompressor convertible and an M-Class SUV -- and a Chrysler PT Cruiser are parked outside the rural Keedysville, Maryland, home Roberts shares with her husband. Inside, several gauzy photographs of nude models hang above the bed in the ground-floor master bedroom, and a rendition of the Casablanca movie poster -- with the couple painted in as Ilsa and Rick -- is prominent above the fireplace. Three ebullient dogs and one gnarled old mutt track in dirt and litter the house with deer bones that they've found outside.
Since moving here twenty-nine years ago, Roberts has divorced her first husband, raised their two sons (Dan, now twenty-nine, lives with his wife down the lane; Jason, twenty-six, is just over an hour away) and remarried. She has also added on a few rooms and an indoor pool; a few years ago, she bought twenty adjoining acres so she could continue to shoo deer out of the garden in her underwear without worrying about neighbors. She and her husband own a tiny bookshop in nearby Boonsboro, but Roberts spends most of her time in an upstairs office where she types, smokes and drinks diet colas eight hours a day, five days a week. It's a routine that's produced an average of seven books a year since 1981, many of them bestsellers.
Roberts knows that her work is commercial fiction and doesn't lose any sleep waiting for National Book Award nominations. The high-art literary tradition isn't what's gotten her to where she is; what has is her "real talent for storytelling," as author Jennifer Crusie (Fast Women; Welcome to Temptation) says, and a commensurate skill with plot and pacing. Readers are pulled into her story lines (which often bounce from one continent to the next) and her well-drawn characters. Fans especially admire Roberts' tough, independent heroines. "When they fit with your own circumstances," says Elizabeth Mayfield, a database administrator from Norwalk, Connecticut, "you think, Gee, there's hope for me." Roberts, however, contends that she's not writing to provide role models for anyone. "I'm gonna tell a good, entertaining story," she says. "I'm not looking to change the world."
Roberts was born Eleanor Marie Robertson, and she grew up in Silver Spring, Maryland, about an hour from where she lives now. Her father worked as a projectionist at the local movie theater and as a stagehand until 1964, when he started a lighting company -- which is where most of the Robertson family still works. Her mother ran the family. "Mom was a very strict disciplinarian," says Roberts' brother Buzz, who is now the president of his dad's company, "but as long as you followed the rules and were polite, you didn't have a problem." He says Nora had it a little easier than her brothers. "Us boys, we knew we were low men on the totem pole. Mom was tickled pink when she had Nora."
"Her daddy worked two jobs all his life, and during the Depression, I took in roomers," says Eleanor Robertson, who at eighty-five still lives in Silver Spring and is now secretary-treasurer of the company her husband started (Bernie Robertson died in 2000). "She knows how hard we worked to give them an education and a nice home." Roberts went to Catholic schools as a child and credits much of her success to the nuns who taught her -- the discipline and guilt in her formative years did her a lot of good.
In her sophomore year of high school, Roberts transferred to public school, where she met Ronald Aufdem-Brinke; she married him at seventeen, in 1968, right after graduation. The young couple moved to Keedysville and had a small house built in the woods. While Aufdem-Brinke worked at his father's sheet-metal business and later the Robertson lighting company, Roberts took care of their two children and the house. "Oh God, I had craft addictions," Roberts says, taking a drag on a cigarette. (She runs through a pack of Winstons at a pace that doesn't quite catch up to chain-smoking but runs several steps beyond casual.) "You name it, I made it. I macraméd two hammocks once. I did ceramics, I sewed the kids' clothes. I even put flies into overalls -- that is sick. I was a sick woman. I baked bread once a week. I canned jellies and made my own spaghetti sauce using my own tomatoes."
Sometime during the next decade (she calls the period her "Earth Mother" years), Roberts started to read Harlequin novels -- the short books were easy for her to finish while the kids were napping. During a blizzard in 1979, trapped inside with little more than her three- and six-year-old sons and a game of Candy Land, Roberts sat down with a pencil and wrote a manuscript of her own, a romance that she's since described as "very bad." In the next year and a half, while her kids were napping or at T-ball practice, she wrote at least six manuscripts in longhand. She submitted some of them to Harlequin, which at the time was using mainly British writers. Roberts didn't hear back, but her enthusiasm wasn't subdued. "I became a writing junkie," she says. Although she was rejected several times, she continued to write -- but started filing her manuscripts in a back drawer rather than submitting them.
Roberts then heard that a new romance publisher, Silhouette, was looking specifically for American writers, so she sent in her work. In 1980 she got a call from Nancy Jackson, a Silhouette editor, saying she had plucked one of Roberts' manuscripts -- Irish Thoroughbred, a slender love story about an Irish stable hand and her boss -- out of the slush pile. Jackson told Roberts she wanted to publish it. Eleanor Aufdem-Brinke changed her name to Nora Roberts because she says she assumed all romance authors used a nom de plume. The book "didn't make waves when it first came out," says Isabel Swift, her current editor, but it sold well in reprint. Roberts was hooked on the process, though, and published five more books the following year, eight the following and ten the year after that.
Roberts hit it big in 1985 when she wrote the first of her MacGregor family series, Playing the Odds. The book, which focuses on a matchmaking Scottish patriarch and his brood, became an immediate bestseller. Romance readers began associating the name Nora Roberts with multigenerational sagas: In addition to the MacGregors, she has written about the Donovans, a modern family of Irish magicians; the Calhouns, a family of pigheaded sisters in Maine; and the Stanislaskis, tempestuous Ukrainian immigrants.
***
From the beginning, Roberts' heroines were not content to wear aprons or take dictation. In Irish Thoroughbred, though Roberts' heroine was young (early twenties) and virginal (well, she was a virgin), she was a horse groomer with an independent streak. Roberts wasn't alone in giving her female characters more authority in the workforce; other American romance authors -- like Jayne Ann Krentz, Sandra Brown and Elizabeth Lowell -- were doing the same. "I think one of the great things the American writer has brought to the romance novel," Krentz says, "is a modern interpretation of women's roles and women's values." Author Janet Evanovich adds, "The genre reflects the increased power and opportunity afforded today's women. We see more variety in the genre in terms of heroine age and occupation. And today's heroine is stronger, more self-reliant. Of course, Nora was always ahead of the pack. Her heroines were always strong."
Rebecca Sullivan, a heroine in Roberts' latest romantic suspense, Three Fates, is a quintessential Nora Roberts lead: She runs the family business (giving boat tours off the western coast of Ireland) and engineers the search for the family's lost treasure. Rebecca's a smart, capable lady with a sense of humor. In the course of the story, she falls in love with a computer expert who eventually marries her -- the book ends in Ireland with the assumption that the husband will help her with the business. "I'm not interested in telling stories about weak women," Roberts says. "Or if they're weak, I want to show how they grow and how they become strong. I'm not writing about Cinderella sitting waiting for her prince to come and take her away. She'll get out of it herself. The prince is a bonus, a completion, another element -- but it's not the answer to all of her problems."
***
Perched on a stool next to her kitchen counter, Roberts doesn't look like a purveyor of dreams. She could be any of a million women, taking a break from a million jobs, looking toward the end of a million days. Right now, her husband is outside, working in the yard before heading to town. Later on, he'll pick up groceries, and Nora will cook dinner; favorites are pasta with red sauce or Cajun chicken. Around 7:30, the two will retire for the evening, probably settling down for a while in front of the television -- it's Thursday, so they'll probably tune in for some of Friends or ER. And that's a typical end to a typical day for the world's most popular romance author. "I always wonder if they asked Agatha Christie if she was homicidal," Roberts says with a laugh. "I don't have a romantic lifestyle."
Still, she says, it's romance books she turns to when she wants to escape reality, so maybe the queen of the realm is, finally, one of its true citizens as well. Roberts, after all, spends her days holed up in her office, writing, researching and investigating the backgrounds for her books. She loves it, she says, but it's work. And when she's done, she's done. "When I read for pleasure," she says, "give me a story."
If today's romance is escapism, millions of its readers would argue that it is also girl-power between pastel covers: adventures that belong to characters who are at their strongest -- and sexiest -- because they are women. So Roberts essentially shrugs off the contempt reserved for romance novels as sexist and ignorant. Still, she recognizes that the genre carries a lot of baggage -- even she finds herself sneaking reads when she's out in public. A lot of the embarrassment, she says, has to do with the way the books look. "It's mostly hard for me when she's falling out of her dress, and he has his mouth on her tit," Roberts says, describing what she calls "nursing mother" covers. She taps her lighter against the counter and rolls her eyes. "To sit on an airplane and read that?"
From Barnes & Noble
The Barnes & Noble Review
Nora Roberts is a consummate storyteller. After more than a hundred novels, her talent shines like new in SEA SWEPT, the first novel in a trilogy. Set on Maryland's eastern shore, SEA SWEPT is a story of both the transforming power of commitment and all-conquering love in all its forms.
When the novel opens, Cameron Quinn is about to pop the cork on a bottle of expensive champagne with beautiful and vapid supermodel Martine in the south of France. Cam is a world-class sailor who wins regattas around the globe. But when he and Martine retire to his suite for some shallow passion, there's a message waiting for him. Cam's father, Ray "the Mighty" Quinn, is in the hospital. Cam's brothers Phillip and Ethan want him to come home immediately. Abandoning the high life, Cam takes off for the simpler terrain of Maryland. His father lies dying in the hospital, the victim of a car wreck that might have been caused by reckless driving or might have been a suicide attempt. Regardless of the cause, there's a further wrinkle in Cam and his brothers' lives in the form of young Seth DeLauter.
Apparently, Ray Quinn had taken Seth in because the boy had been in a bad situation with his mother. This makes sense to the brothers Quinn, since each of them had been plucked from terrible circumstance by Ray and his late wife, Stella.
Cam's childhood had been a canvas of terror at the hands of an abusive father, and Cam had taken to the road and to stealing to protect himself. Ray and Stella took him in and gave him shelter, love, and security. Although the scars occasionally show, Cam isforeverindebted to the memory of his adoptive mother, and to his now-dying adoptive father, for having literally saved his life. Each brother has a different but ultimately similar experience with the Quinns. So it seems to them that young Seth is in the same boat.
When their father dies, Cam and his brothers learn something further about Seth's background, mainly through rumor and innuendo. There's a hint of scandal to their father's past. He had been a college professor, and a female student had accused him of having taken advantage of her several years' earlier. Seth may, in fact, be the result of this brief and unhappy union. Cam discovers that Seth's mother, a prostitute in the city, had been blackmailing Ray Quinn as he attempted to adopt the boy who might be his son. The night of Ray's car crash, he was returning from a trip to see Seth's mother. He had apparently paid an enormous sum of money to buy his son back from the woman.
Although this incident tarnishes the memory of their father, the brothers Quinn are determined to maintain a home for Seth. They see too much of themselves in him. But this is just the beginning of their story together as they return to their family homestead — for each has a life beyond their family and must give it up and adapt to the new circumstance of raising a child together.
Enter social worker Anna Spinelli, an attractive, smart young woman who only wants what is best for Seth, and who feels that the household the three brothers put together may not be the best situation for him. Although the sparks fly between her and Cam, she knows her job. Seth may have to be turned over to a foster home.
As Cam and his brothers learn to put Seth first, they discover love, family, and yes, even romance. SEA SWEPT is primarily Cam's novel, though — the story of his journey to discover the strength and vision that had lain dormant within him for too long.
It is no wonder that Nora Roberts's fiction is often compared to that of Sidney Sheldon and other mainstream novelists, but I'll go one further:
She's better.
SEA SWEPT is a true delight. I laughed out loud in some parts, and I worked to hold back the tears in others. These are real people dealing intelligently with genuine problems. Each character is complex and fascinating, even the supposed bad guys. Although Roberts can bring a woman like Anna Spinelli to life, what impresses me most is how well she writes about men. The Quinn brothers are tough, rude, smart, and sexy, but always very human and extremely vulnerable at their best. I can't wait for the rest of the trilogy about these brothers and their adventures in building a solid and heartfelt life.
—Jessi Rose Lucas
From the Publisher
A champion boat racer, Cameron Quinn traveled the world spending his winnings on champagne and women. But when his dying father calls him home to care for Seth, a troubled young boy not unlike Cameron once was, his life changes overnight. . .
After years of independence, Cameron has to learn to live with his brothers again, while he struggles with cooking, cleaning, and caring for a difficult boy. Old rivalries and new resentments flare between Cameron and his brothers, but they try to put aside their differences for Seth's sake. In the end, a social worker, as tough as she is beautiful, will decide Seth's fate. She has the power to bring the Quinns together - or tear them apart. . .
Publishers Weekly
Roberts's Dream trilogy involved three women living in a palatial Big Sur mansion. This, the first volume of the Quinn Brothers trilogy, revolves around a trio of strapping, lusty guys in a comfortable home on Maryland's Eastern Shore. Cameron Quinnthe eldest of three abused boys adopted by Ray and Stella Quinnis an adventurer who likes fast boats, fast cars and undemanding women. After Ray is injured in a car accident, Cam flies to his father's deathbed where he promises to look after 10-year-old Seth, for whom Ray has just started adoption proceedings. Anna Spinelli, Seth's social worker, is taken with both Cam's incomparable body and his big heart. Anna brings her own history of abuse to steamy encounters and the reader knows that Cam's pedal-to-the-metal days are numbered. Roberts is one of the great propagandists for family values, home, hearth and children, making them goals that are rewarding and desirable. (Jan.)
Jessi Rose Lucas, barnesandnoble.com - Jessi Rose Lucas
Nora Roberts is a consummate storyteller. After more than a hundred novels, her talent shines like new in Sea Swept, the first novel in a trilogy. Set on Maryland's eastern shore Sea Swept, is a story of both the transforming power of commitment and all-conquering love in all its forms.
When the novel opens, Cameron Quinn is about to pop the cork on a bottle of expensive champagne with beautiful and vapid supermodel Martine in the south of France. Cam is a world-class sailor who wins regattas around the globe. But when he and Martine retire to his suite for some shallow passion, there's a message waiting for him. Cam's father, Ray "the Mighty" Quinn, is in the hospital. Cam's brothers Phillip and Ethan want him to come home immediately. Abandoning the high life, Cam takes off for the simpler terrain of Maryland. His father lies dying in the hospital, the victim of a car wreck that might have been caused by reckless driving or might have been a suicide attempt. Regardless of the cause, there's a further wrinkle in Cam and his brothers' lives in the form of young Seth DeLauter.
Apparently, Ray Quinn had taken Seth in because the boy had been in a bad situation with his mother. This makes sense to the brothers Quinn, since each of them had been plucked from terrible circumstance by Ray and his late wife, Stella.
Cam's childhood had been a canvas of terror at the hands of an abusive father, and Cam had taken to the road and to stealing to protect himself. Ray and Stella took him in and gave him shelter, love, and security. Although the scars occasionally show, Cam is forever indebted to the memory of his adoptive mother, and to his now-dying adoptive father, for having literally saved his life. Each brother has a different but ultimately similar experience with the Quinns. So it seems to them that young Seth is in the same boat.
When their father dies, Cam and his brothers learn something further about Seth's background, mainly through rumor and innuendo. There's a hint of scandal to their father's past. He had been a college professor, and a female student had accused him of having taken advantage of her several years' earlier. Seth may, in fact, be the result of this brief and unhappy union. Cam discovers that Seth's mother, a prostitute in the city, had been blackmailing Ray Quinn as he attempted to adopt the boy who might be his son. The night of Ray's car crash, he was returning from a trip to see Seth's mother. He had apparently paid an enormous sum of money to buy his son back from the woman.
Although this incident tarnishes the memory of their father, the brothers Quinn are determined to maintain a home for Seth. They see too much of themselves in him. But this is just the beginning of their story together as they return to their family homestead -- for each has a life beyond their family and must give it up and adapt to the new circumstance of raising a child together.
Enter social worker Anna Spinelli, an attractive, smart young woman who only wants what is best for Seth, and who feels that the household the three brothers put together may not be the best situation for him. Although the sparks fly between her and Cam, she knows her job. Seth may have to be turned over to a foster home.
As Cam and his brothers learn to put Seth first, they discover love, family, and yes, even romance. Sea Swept, is primarily Cam's novel, though -- the story of his journey to discover the strength and vision that had lain dormant within him for too long.
It is no wonder that Nora Roberts's fiction is often compared to that of Sidney Sheldon and other mainstream novelists, but I'll go one further:
She's better.
Sea Swept, is a true delight. I laughed out loud in some parts, and I worked to hold back the tears in others. These are real people dealing intelligently with genuine problems. Each character is complex and fascinating, even the supposed bad guys. Although Roberts can bring a woman like Anna Spinelli to life, what impresses me most is how well she writes about men. The Quinn brothers are tough, rude, smart, and sexy, but always very human and extremely vulnerable at their best. I can't wait for the rest of the trilogy about these brothers and their adventures in building a solid and heartfelt life.
Loading...Product Details
- Pub. Date: May 2001
- Publisher: Penguin Group (USA) Incorporated
- Format: Mass Market Paperback, 352pp
- Sales Rank: 10,218
- Series: Quinn Brothers Series, #1
- ISBN-13: 9780515121841
- ISBN: 0515121843
Table of Contents
Interviews & Essays
On Thursday, December 4, barnesandnoble.com welcomed Nora Roberts, author of SEA SWEPT.
VogelBN: Welcome, Ms. Roberts. We are so pleased to have you with us tonight at BN!!
Nora Roberts: Wonderful to be here. Thanks for having me.
VogelBN: The audience is brimming with questions, and eager to chat with you....
Nora Roberts:
Question: Can you give us a few hints about the next book in the SEA SWEPT rilogy?
Nora Roberts: The second book, RISING TIDES, will be out in July... It centers on Ethan, who's a waterman, and continues the story of the three brothers and Seth. We'll see more of where Seth came from, more interaction with the brothers. More romance.
Question: I'm from the Maryland shore, and the setting of SEA SWEPT was really familiar; was it based on a real town?
Nora Roberts: No, not really. I did a kind of blend of several towns on the Eastern Shore and made up my own. But I tried to be as authentic as possible.
Question: How do you change your pace/style between your more traditional romance titles and the J. D. Robb series? The J. D. series is very dark, gritty, and extremely sexually charged. Is it a difficult transition for you?
Nora Roberts: Not at all. I love doing them! I have such fun with the futuristic stuff and really, really enjoy exploring Eve and Roarke's relationship, as well as murdering people in gruesome manners. LOL. Terrific fun for me.
Question: The holidays are here once again! I'm curious, if you were to have five characters over to your home with your family -- who would you pick and why?
Nora Roberts: Wow. Tough one. Eve and Roarke, I suppose, as I spend so much time with them. Then it's tough. Maybe the MacKade brothers. After all, they're local boys. LOL.
Question: Aside from your own fabulous books of love, what's your all-time favorite love story?
Nora Roberts: Another hard one. I'm a huge fan of Mary Stewart's, so right off I'll say something like MY BROTHER MICHAEL. I love that book...but I really enjoy so many, it's a tough call.
Question: Hi, Nora!! I love all of your books!! Are you going to keep writing for Silhouette?
Nora Roberts: Absolutely. As long as I have ideas that fit the category framework, I'll keep writing them. I love doing category. I really appreciate the form.
Question: Do you think that romance is dying in the world we live in?
Nora Roberts: Oh no. I think romance never goes out of fashion, it's fluid. It changes to fit the needs of men and women as society changes, but it never goes away.
Question: Does your husband sell Janet Dailey's books in his bookstore? NoraR
Nora Roberts: No, he doesn't. I guess that's sort of a given.
Question: You've accomplished so much since 1981 with the debut of your first book. If you could, is there anything you'd like to do again differently?
Nora Roberts: Hmmm. I'd be more patient with my children when they were growing up.... But I must've done okay. They're great young men. I'd have started writing sooner. So many stories, so little time. LOL.
Question: Are there any Web sites about you and your work that you endorse? Is there a Nora Roberts fan club we can write to?
Nora Roberts: Actually, I have a Web page, and I'm pretty sure the URL is http://www.lightst.com/nora. As for a fan club, there is a marvelous group of ladies online. A couple of boards you might enjoy. On The Book Report and The Romance Realm.
Question: What is your background as a writer? With so many writers' groups and graduate programs -- are they a necessary background for success? NoraR
Nora Roberts: I don't have any background, if you mean education and such as a writer. Unless being Irish counts. We're born storytellers. I think you have to have a love of stories, of the written word. Otherwise how can you write? You have to have a good handle on English. But formal college, classes and so forth, not necessarily. You can be taught the nuts and bolts, but not the core of storytelling. You just have it.
Question: How many books do you write in a year? How long did it take you to complete SEA SWEPT?
Nora Roberts: I have no idea. Absolutely none. I never keep track of that sort of thing. It's a game I play with myself. Being obsessive/compulsive, if I were to time my books, I'd worry if one took me longer, or shorter, than another. Besides, it's not how long that matters. It's what you have when you're finished that counts.
Question: Do you find it more difficult to write romance titles now that your main characters in the J. D. Robb series are married?
Nora Roberts: No. I love writing relationship books. With the Robb books, I'm able to explore a marriage. In the other books I do, I continue to explore and enjoy the process of falling in love. It's a constant fascination to me.
Question: The cover of your latest is so beautiful.... I just can't stand the typical "Fabio" covers.... Do you have much to say about what jackets go onto your books?
Nora Roberts: I do have cover approval on my hardcover and paperback originals. For my categories, I don't. There just isn't time. But I've been very happy with my covers all around.
Question: So, is Seth really the brother of the Quinns? Will the truth be revealed by the final book in the trilogy?
Nora Roberts: You'll find out everything in the final book. I'd never leave my readers hanging at the end of a series. LOL. That wouldn't be fair.
Question: Nora, give us a hint, what will Eve give Roarke, the man who has everything, for Christmas?
Nora Roberts: Something that's close to his heart. And that's all you get until the book comes out.
Question: Where do you live?
Nora Roberts: I live in Maryland.
Question: You are probably the most prolific writer in the world. Where on earth do you come up with so many ideas?
Nora Roberts: It's my job. LOL. I haven't a clue where ideas come from, I just thank God for them.It's really the making of an idea into a book that separates the want tos from the does its. LOL.
Question: I've enjoyed all your books and hope you write for many years. I'm looking forward to reading your new book. Will you be doing any book signings nywhere for your new book?
Nora Roberts: For SEA SWEPT we'll be having a signing at my dh's store, Turn The Page, on Dec. 13. It's our big holiday signing. Lots of fun. Door prizes!!! LOL. Come see us.
Question: What is the difference between the novels you have written and how this one breaks away [from] your original style of writing?
Nora Roberts: I don't know how to answer that. I never think about changing style or sticking to style. I just write the story as it happens. I think maybe as this series is more from the male point of view, that's a bit of a change. But I often write from the male point of view.
Question: What can you tell us about SEA SWEPT? I don't even know the characters we're going to meet... NoraR
Nora Roberts: It's set, as is the trilogy, on Maryland's Eastern Shore and centers on three adopted brothers. In the first, their father is dying, and Cameron Quinn comes back home -- he's been racing and living it up in Europe. And they find themselves trying to raise the latest stray boy their father has taken in.
Question: In my copy of the FALL OF SHANE MACKADE, the copyright reads Elleanor Wilder. Who is that?
Nora Roberts: That's my married name. It was a mistake, someone dropped the ball and put my married name in rather than my writing name.
Question: How did you get your publisher to buy off on a romance with men as main characters? I've been wanting to do that for a long time. Do you think this will start a trend?
Nora Roberts: I don't believe in trends. Actually, I just wrote the books. I've done men as central figures before, and I'm very lucky to have an editor who's open to trying something a little different. Also, I'd have to say I have a track record -- built-up trust, so to speak. They'll give me some room.
Question: In my newest Publisher's Weekly, I see there is new book called HOMEPORT being published. Is this a continuation of SEA SWEPT as well?
Nora Roberts: No, HOMEPORT is my next hardcover, out in March, and doesn't connect to the trilogy. It's a romantic suspense, dealing with art forgery and such and set primarily on the coast of Maine.
Question: Could you describe some of your research techniques for us?
Nora Roberts: I don't think I have any real techniques.I just read and wander and now plug into the Internet and see what I can find on what I've decided will be my background. I'm totally disorganized when it comes to research. I just...punt.
Question: Do you have any close relationships with other romance novelists? If so, who?
Nora Roberts: I have a lot of very good and dear friends in the business. Ruth Langan is my oldest writing friend. Not that Ruth's old. LOL. But I met her first, years back. Also Marianne Willman, Patricia Gaffney, Mary Kay McComas, Julie Garwood, Catherine Coulter. Jeez. I'm leaving tons out. It would take all night.
Question: Nora, your characters are all so real...how long do you take to get to know them before you start to write their story?
Nora Roberts: I generally start right off, just getting the story down in a very rough first draft. I get to know my people during that time, then some time during the second pass, I know them better. By the time I'm finished, they're as real as my family. And don't ask me where's dinner. Mostly.
Question: Who is your all-time favorite writer, and what type of books does he/she write?
Nora Roberts: It's too hard. Mary Stewart is my oldest favorite, but I read across the board. Have a lot of well-loved writers I look forward to.
Question: What would you tell kids such as myself who have a dream of becoming writers?
Nora Roberts: If you want to write, write. Make no excuses. If you want to write, read. You can't write well if you don't love to fall into a story. Study. Learn your craft. Join a writing group so you'll make friends and have company whining. Writers whine. We can't help it. LOL.
Question: Do you think romance lit is a type of "porn" for women ?
Nora Roberts: No, of course not. Porn is sex for sex's sake. Romance is the celebration of relationships, of the grand mystery of men and women. The sex in them is a human and expected extension of emotional commitment. No emotional commitment in porn last time I looked.
Question: The settings for your books are so powerful -- would you please tell us how "place" influences you?
Nora Roberts: It's hard to say. There are places I've visited that just grab me, emotionally, visually. Other times I've set books -- most of them, actually -- in places I've never been but want to visit. It's like a canvas, I guess. I want a big, sprawling canvas sometimes; others, I want something small, intimate.
Question: Hi, Nora. What do you think is the difference between mainstream and category romances?
Nora Roberts: I could - -and have -- done whole workshops on this question. LOL.... But briefly, it's a difference in scope, in language, in reader expectation.... You have more room in mainstream, and you have to fill every inch of that canvas I spoke of. Category is generally more intimate, must move quicker. It can be very difficult to get a full, interesting story across in that brief time. Both are art, it's just different paint strokes.
VogelBN: This will be our last question for Nora Roberts...
Nora Roberts:
Question: Nora, do you plan to write another series after this one?
Nora Roberts: Oh yes. In fact, I'll probably start on it this year. I'm planning on setting another trilogy in Ireland. My favorite place in the world.
VogelBN: Thank you so much for joining us this evening, Ms. Roberts... It has truly been a wonderful experience!!
Nora Roberts: My pleasure. Thanks for asking me.
VogelBN: We hope you will join us again upon the publication of your next book!!
Nora Roberts: Love to. It's always fun.
VogelBN: Good night!!
Nora Roberts: Night everyone.
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Hear our exclusive audio interview with Nora Roberts (11:41).