Throughout her career, Robards has continued a common-sense approach to writing, choosing her own path instead of allowing others to direct her course. Thrilled by her success, she dropped out of law school and began writing full time. She resurrected her creative writing project, sent it to publishers, got some interest, and wrote Island Flame (1981). In the summer before her final year of law school, Robards saved herself from a career path she didn’t want by dedicating herself to her writing. Her discouragement didn’t last for long, though: those first 50 pages turned into her first novel. Her classmates laughed, and her professor noted that while she had talent, she needed to fix her reading material. In a class full of men who believed they were writing the next great American novel, Robard’s steamy, exciting romance stood out – in a bad way. Pragmatically, Robards went to a local bookstore, looked at what was selling, and decided that was what she would write. During a graduate level creative writing class, her professor requested they write the first 50 pages of a book that would get published. When she wrote the first few pages of her first book, she had never even read a romance, noting that she had always considered them to be to un-intellectual for her liking. She had a submission accepted to Reader’s Digest at a young age, but in her family of doctors and lawyers, “author” was not a valid career choice. Karen Robards didn’t intend to become a best-selling romance author.

One summer by karen robards