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.

One summer by karen robards