Marcia Talley (1950 – )

October 10, 1950) is a best-selling American author of romantic novels. She was the first author to be inducted into the Romance Writers of America Hall of Fame.

Roberts was born the only daughter and the youngest of five children in Silver Spring, Maryland. Her education included some time at a Catholic school before she married young and settled in Keedysville, Maryland. For a while she worked as a legal secretary, but started to stay at home after the birth of her two sons.

She began writing during a blizzard in February 1979, and her first novel, Irish Thoroughbred, appeared in 1981, published by Silhouette. She met her second husband, Bruce Wilder, when she hired him to build bookshelves. They were married in July 1985.

Under the pseudonym "J.D. Robb," Roberts also writes the "In Death" series of futuristic science fiction police procedurals. They feature NYPSD Detective Eve Dallas and her husband Roarke and are set in a mid-21st century New York City. The initials "J.D." were taken from her sons, Jason and Dan, while "Robb" is a shortened form of Roberts.

Roberts is famously prolific, in 1996 she passed the hundredth novel mark with her novel Montana Sky, and has released as many as ten or eleven new novels in a year. She writes eight hours a day, every day, and even works on vacation.

Other romance authors jokingly refer to her as "The Nora".