The Life and Career of Danielle Steel
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If you frequent most public libraries in North America (which you should), you’ve probably noticed a handful of authors who always seem to enter the selection of new arrivals. James Patterson, Nora Roberts, and even Frieda McFadden have become authors who publish multiple novels in a calendar year. But any such list of authors would be incomplete without including the best-selling author alive: Danielle Steel. According to her own website, Steele has sold over a billion copies of her books worldwide, and she has been doing so longer than almost anyone else.
While other authors who published multiple books in a single year often became writers as a second career, Steele started out as a writer from the beginning. While a student at New York University (NYU), she completed her first novel at the age of 19. But he started writing much before that. Steele had a wonderful childhood. He was born in New York City in 1947 to a Portuguese American mother and German father, and the family spent several years living in France and attending lavish dinner parties.
“My childhood was very adult,” He said in a 1988 interview. “So I became kind of a fly-on-the-wall observer at an early age. Looking back now, that’s probably what made me a writer.”
But her parents divorced when she was eight and she soon became disillusioned with their life of luxury. “I was very bored and disillusioned with the comfortable world I grew up in,” Steele said. People Magazine in 2024. “I saw the hypocrisy.” The stories he wrote in childhood turned into poetry in his adolescence. Steele graduated from Lycée Français de New York (LFNY), a private bilingual French high school in Manhattan, in 1965, and studied fashion and literature at both Parsons School of Design and later NYU. The same year she graduated from high school, Steele married Claude-Eric Lazard, a French banker. She was 18 when she gave birth to her first child, daughter Beatrix. She had seven additional children, two stepchildren, and four additional marriages, all of which created both obstacles and inspiration for her eventual writing career.
Against the wishes of her first husband, Steele began working for a public relations agency in New York, where she later met an editor Ladies Home Journal. The editor was impressed by Steele’s freelance writing and encouraged him to take it up as a profession. After separating from Lazard in 1972, she moved to San Francisco to work as a copywriter for Gray Advertising. according to a 1992 profile In People magazine, Steele “shut down” herself for three months to complete her first novel, going homeIn 1973. He described the book’s subject matter adequately and ominously to a reporter at the time, saying that “Every woman falls in love with a bastard at least once in her life.”
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During this time, Steele also became romantically involved with an incarcerated man named Danny Zugelder. While researching a magazine article on conscientious objectors in prison, she met him in a prison near Lompoc, California. When Zugelder was released on parole he stayed with Steele for a short time, but in 1974 he returned to prison for rape and robbery. The following year, when her first divorce became final, Steele married Zugelder while he was in prison; She suffered several miscarriages before getting a divorce in 1978. It was her relationship with her second husband that influenced Steele’s later novels, promise of passion And now and forever.
As for Zugelder’s thoughts on the two books that inspired them? “I can’t stand her writing,” he once said. People magazine. “They’re very dirty, useless books.” Well, every single one of his corny, trashy books has made it to bestseller lists in both hardcover and paperback, and they continue to do so even after five decades.
According to 1992 profile PeopleThis was the publication of Steele’s fourth novel, Promise, That’s when “the money started coming in” and the author became a prominent member of high society in San Francisco. By that time, Steele was married for the third time, to William “Bill” Toth, with whom she would share her son, Nick (who tragically died by suicide in 1997). It appears that a recurring theme in both Steele’s novels and her own personal life is that the men she surrounded herself with were not able to handle her growing success as anything other than a wife and mother.
“Daniel is a control freak,” Toth told the magazine. “He needs people who will let him make decisions.” Which doesn’t seem so outrageous now, but perhaps it was too much for some men in the late 1970s.
Steele expressed it this way, “Guys don’t like it when the attention is on you and you’re the famous guy.” Steele and Toth divorced in 1981. As far as marriages to two troubled men—Toth struggled with substance abuse—Steele once commented“I’m probably the most conservative, conservative person you’ll meet. I’m very religious. I’ve been that way my whole life, which is why I married those two idiots instead of just sleeping with them.”
By the 1980s, Steele’s career as a writer was flourishing. While raising children and managing a tumultuous love life, she had already begun publishing several titles a year. has already become an established fixture the new York Times On the bestseller list, he expanded his reach by co-writing his first book of nonfiction, having a babyAnd his book of poetry, Love: Poems. Steele will publish four additional nonfiction books, the most recent in 2020 expect a miracle. “I am amazed at my success,” he said. 2006 interview with age to. “I wrote because I needed to and wanted to do it. I never thought I would become famous. I did it at night because I loved it. I never did it as a job to make money. I just did it because I had to.” Steele would have five children with her third husband, John Traina, making writing at night a necessity for a mother with so many responsibilities, who often survived on only four hours of sleep.
So, as he explains, how does Steele manage to publish that many novels a year readers club In 2004, each of his books took approximately two and a half years to complete. For one thing, the author is known to be an expert-level multitasker, having once said that she often manages five projects simultaneously. Steele has also published several children’s and picture books.
How does she accomplish all this? In the 2020s, the use of ghostwriters has often generated controversy, especially when female writers choose to be honest about it. For example, Millie Bobby Brown, faced controversy To use a ghostwriter to craft his historical fantasy novel in 2023 nineteen stepsAnd this hatred is rarely directed at men in equal positions. (In contrast, reality television star and actress Lisa Rinna, whose recently published memoir You better believe I’ll talk about it Was selected for Reese’s Book Club praised For her transparency about using a ghostwriter for her writing projects because she “isn’t a writer”).
Questions about whether Steele used a ghostwriter to rapidly increase productivity in publishing have often been met with similar disapproval, mostly from the author himself, who has not taken kindly to the question in the past. More on that in a 2012 post blog Responding to rumors that she employed ghostwriters, Steele wrote: “Are you kidding? Who do you think writes my books, as I huddle at my typewriter for weeks at a time, working on a first draft, with unbrushed hair, in an ancient nightgown, while every inch of my body aches after typing 20 or 22 hours a day? That’s who writes my books: me.”
In her fifth decade as a writer and as a best-selling living author, Steele’s productivity has shown no signs of slowing down. It seems that the topic of ghostwriters has not come up again since the early 2010s, and even though their stance on ghostwriting has changed since then, it has not affected their success. At this point, it won’t tarnish his legacy. “His success continues despite a severe lack of critical acclaim,” wrote Publishers Weekly In a review of an unauthorized 1994 biography on Steele that nearly killed him stop writing.
Good thing he didn’t, because more than 30 years later, his business success remains undefeated. Steele has already published two novels this year (felicia’s favorite And devil’s daughter), the third coming in April 2026 (a woman’s place). There are four more titles scheduled for the remainder of 2026 and two titles already planned for 2027. Literary purists love to cry that Steele doesn’t write “real” literature, and that all his books have the same kind of plots and aren’t worthy of the money and attention he keeps getting. His unwavering fan base begs to differ, with Steele’s novels currently receiving an average rating of 4.01 out of 5 goodreads. For an author who has been publishing continuously since 1973, this is very good.
Let people enjoy things, and let Danielle Steele laugh all the way to the bank.