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Good question. Since 1981, when she published her first romance, she has become a virtual one-woman industry, with 128 titles to her credit, including her newest, River's End, a suspenseful love story set in the Pacific Northwest. In 1998 alone she had 11 books on the New York Times bestseller lists, including four ranked No.1, and there are more than 85 million copies of her novels in print. Yet, she stillfinds time to answer all her mail and to attend book signings and lectures, after which she often joins fans for a drink. "I cherish the connection I have with them," she says.

Roberts clearly identifies with those readers. Once upon a time, in a different life with a different husband, she fell in love with Harlequin romances. "They were great fun to read," she says. "For that period in my life - a bad marriage, endless days with small children- they were a kind of sanity."

Then in February 1979, when a snowstorm stranded her and her family for more than a week, she dug up an empty notebook and wrote a romance of her own, a steamy saga set in Spain. Harlequin rejected it - "It was very bad," says Roberts. "One big cliche" - but a year later, competitor Silhouette accepted another, Irish Thoroughbred. Then, as now, Roberts was attracted by strong, independent heroes - women, she maintains, much like those who buy her books. "My readers are real women with real lives," she says, "and they don't all live in trailers." Her agent Amy Berkower adds, "She wants to elevate romance."

Roberts first learned the power of stories growing up in Silver Spring, Md., where she loved watching Peter Pan and The King and I over and over at the theater where her father was, for a time, the projectionist. The youngest of five children of a TV lighting technician and his homemaker wife, she believes writing was her destiny. "There were always books all over the house," Roberts says. "And my dad was a real Irish storyteller."

In 1970 she married Ronald Aufdem-Brinke, her high school sweetheart, with whom she had two children, Dan, now 26 and an assistant manager of a sporting-goods store in Frederick,Md., and Jason, 23, a drama student at the University of Maryland. "I became a kind of earth mother," says Roberts. "I baked bread, canned, sered, macramed, embroidered, grew vegetables. I was obviously looking for a creative outlet." Divorced in 1983, Roberts later found her own true romance with Bruce Wilder, a loca carpenter who came to her house one day to build bookcases. "I am living proof," she marvels," that what I write about can happen in real life." They wed in 1985, and since then Wilder, now 47 and an owner of a local bookstore, has remodeled the kitchen, added on an enclosed pool and hot tub and built his wife a room-size closet for her hundreds of pairs of shoes. "My one weakness, "Roberts admits. "There are never enough."

Amid all this bliss, in 1997 she found herself in a year-long legal battle with fellow romance writer Janet Daily, who eventually confessed to plagiarizing Roberts's works. A reader first drew the problem to her attention, Roberts sued, and Daily, now 54, admitted that in at least two of her novels she had lifted passages and ideas from Roberts. Last April, Roberts recieved an out-of-court settlement for an undisclosed amount, but the episode left her rattled. "I couldn't write for a while," she says. "I felt like I was being stalked."

With life back to normal, and the kids grown up, Roberts can focus on really important stuff - like candlelight dinners with her husband. "I'll throw together some pasta, Bruce will make a salad," she says. "It's easier now, just the two of us."

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