I'm going to attempt a hit and run comment here because my 80 year old mother both fractured her pelvic bone AND got a pacemaker this last week and I'm only home for a flying visit but I simply can't resist this thread. She doing great by the way but with both parents being elderly we're trying to keep someone with them all the time this first week or so as she begins to get back on her feet. So, sorry in advance I pop in and out of the discussion.
Anyway back on topic:
As a last comment, I can't help but feel that Nora Roberts is overrated and dreadful. What have I missed? Somebody enlighten me....or is she simply the most prolific?
I'm not sure if she's the most prolific but she's probably in the top ten of the "current" list that would qualify and most of those started out as series/category romance authors, which accounts for a lot of the way their writing styles developed. That's neither a put-down nor a compliment but rather an acknowledgement that the most successful long-term series authors learn to be both efficient with words as well as prolific with them. It works better for some than others. (Crusie started in series and still does some, I think, although she's no where close to being in Robert's league in terms of quantity of books produced.)
Personally, of the romance authors that fall into that extremely productive & seemingly endless backlist category, I much prefer Jayne Ann Krentz (AKA Amanda Quick & Jayne Castle most notably) to Nora Roberts (AKA J.D. Robb). There's a certain smoothness to Krentz's writing while she's immersing the reader in romance symbolism that covers a multitude of sins. And I've always adored her quirky, many times strangely unorthodox and atypical characters. By contrast, Robert's characters have always struck me as extremely stereotypical in a bad way and her plots seem, I don't know, just awkward to me. My daughter, OTOH, adores Robert's IN DEATH romantic suspense series under the Robb pseudonym and considers them her all-time favorite books. So, go figure.
The really interesting thing to me is that while neither Roberts nor Krentz have won that many awards - if any? - they are absolutely consistently popular with readers over a wide variety of sub-genres. They've each written historicals, contemporaries, and futuristics, many with paranormal/fantasy and/or mystery/suspense elements. We're talking about the ability to dip their toes into a very mixed bag of types of books within and without the romance genre itself and still consistently deliver satisfying reads for the most part.
Something is working for them.
