Early Years
Janet Anne Haradon was born on May 21, 1944 in Storm Lake, Iowa. Dailey always wanted to be a writer and loved books. Her three elder sisters often read to her when she was good. By the age of four, she had her own library card. She graduated in 1962 from Jefferson High School in nearby Independence, Iowa. She was employed by a construction firm owned by her future husband, Bill Dailey, who was fifteen years her senior. The two continued to work together, often spending 17 hours a day, seven days a week at work.
In 1974, after asserting yet again that she could write a better romance novel than those she had read, Dailey's husband challenged her to prove it. She sold her first manuscript to Harlequin, becoming their first American author. American writers had never written for category romances, and Harlequin was unwilling to gamble that readers would embrace the American themes or American settings, and rejected other American authors, such as Nora Roberts, because they "already had their American writer."
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Famous quotes related to early years:
“If there is a price to pay for the privilege of spending the early years of child rearing in the driver’s seat, it is our reluctance, our inability, to tolerate being demoted to the backseat. Spurred by our success in programming our children during the preschool years, we may find it difficult to forgo in later states the level of control that once afforded us so much satisfaction.”
—Melinda M. Marshall (20th century)