How Nora got started….

Q) Tell us about the blizzard of 1979 that jump-started your career…

A) The blizzard of ’79 hit in February, and I was stuck in the house with two small children. Any mother out there knows what it is to weep bitter tears when the radio announces that there will be no morning kindergarten. I live in rural Maryland, and had no four-wheel drive transportation, two active sons, a dwindling supply of chocolate and three feet of snow. I’d never thought about writing as a career. I thought everyone made up stories in their heads. But after days of being trapped by the blizzard, I was tired of playing Candy Land and was desperate for some sort of release. I took one of those stories in my head and wrote it down. The minute I started the process of writing, I fell in love with it. I had, to this point, sought some avenue for creativity in every craft known to man. Ceramics, embroidery, sewing (I even put little flies in the overalls I made my sons) canning, macramé, needlepoint, baking. I had a distressing craft addiction. Fortunately writing cured me of it, and I found the right avenue.

Q) When you first took a number two pencil to a spiral notebook, did you realize that you were on your way to becoming a bestselling author?

A) Writing down stories during that long week in February was more to save my sanity than a career move.

Q) How long was it before you published your fist novel?

A) By the time my first novel, Irish Thoroughbred, was published in 1981, I already had three years of hard work behind me and several rejected manuscripts languishing in desk drawers.

Q) Have you thought about publishing those early works?

A) The very first story -- definitely no....never! But everything else has been re-

worked, punched up, and sold years ago. There's really nothing else languishing

now.

Q) What did you do before you became a writer?

A) I was a really bad legal secretary.

Q) Who helped to develop your talent as a young person?

A) I imagine every teacher helped. I joke about the nuns, but the fact is the discipline that they drum into education sticks. You can have all the talent in the world but if you don’t have the discipline to sit down and write on a regular basis, you’re not going to write or publish any books.