Debbie Macomber is an American author of romance novels and contemporary women’s fiction.
Debbie Macomber short biography
Debbie Macomber was born on 22nd October, in 1948, in Yakima in Washington.
Macomber is dyslexic and has only a high school education. Determined to be a writer, she sat in her kitchen in front of a rented typewriter to develop her first few manuscripts, while raising four children. After five years and many rejections from publishers, she turned to freelance magazine work.
Macomber attended a romance writer’s conference, where one of her manuscripts was selected to be publicly critiqued by an editor from Harlequin Enterprises Ltd. The editor tore apart her novel and recommended that she throw it away. Undaunted, Macomber scraped together $10 to mail the same novel, Heartsong, to Harlequin’s rival, Silhouette Books. Silhouette bought the book, which became the first romance novel to be reviewed by Publishers Weekly.
Starlight was the first of her novels to be published, as part of the Silhouette Special Edition romance line, now owned by Harlequin. Macomber continued to write romances for Silhouette, and later Harlequin. In 1988, Harlequin asked Macomber to write a series of interconnected stories, which became known as the Navy series. Before long, she was releasing two or three titles per year. By 1994, Macomber began releasing single-title novels. Her first hardcover was released in 2001.
In most years since 1986, Macomber has released a Christmas-themed book or novella.
Over 170 million copies of her books are in print throughout the world. This Matter of Marriage, became a made-for-TV-movie in 1998. Three of Macomber’s novels have been made into Hallmark television movies: “Debbie Macomber’s Mrs. Miracle”, “Call Me Mrs. Miracle”, and “Trading Christmas”, based on Macomber’s novel “When Christmas Comes”.
Macomber also now writes inspirational nonfiction, including cookbooks and children’s books. Macomber owns a yarn store in Port Orchard, Washington and there is a Debbie Macomber line of knitting pattern books.
In July 2013, the Hallmark Channel began airing its first-ever original, scripted series based on her Cedar Cove book series. Macomber is the series developer and executive producer.
Macomber is a three-time winner of the B. Dalton Award, and the inaugural winner of the fan-voted Quill Award for romance (2005, for 44 Cranberry Point). She has been awarded the Romantic Times Magazine Distinguished Lifetime Achievement Award and has won a Romance Writers of America RITA Award, for The Christmas Basket.
She threw out the first pitch in a Seattle Mariners game at Safeco Field in 2007.
Macomber and her husband, Wayne, raised four children and have grandchildren. They live in Port Orchard, Washington and winter in Florida.