Karen Robards

Karen Robards (born August 24, 1954 in Louisville, Kentucky) is a best-selling author of over thirty romance novels. 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 fiction. Her work has been translated into eleven languages, and has won awards from both Romantic Times and Affaire de Coeur.

Biography

Early years

Karen Robards sold her first story in 1973. As a teenager working part-time for her orthodontist father, Robards saw a Readers Digest solication for funny anecdotes. She quickly penned and submitted a two-paragraph story. Several weeks later she received a check for $100, and her entry was featured in the December 1973 Reader's Digest. Although she attempted to sell other anecdotes to the magazine, her subsequent attempts were rejected.

Her first attempts at writing 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. 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. Although her professor and classmates laughed at her choice of subject matter, those 50 pages became the basis for her first book, Island Flame. This debut novel was published in 1981, when Robards was only 24.