How does one go from building cardboard Christmas trees in a tiny apartment to living successfully as a popular computer book author? Robin Williams knows the answer.

Though she shares her name with the famous comedian, Williams achieved success on her own. When her husband left her pregnant and with two small mouths to feed, Williams needed more money but did not want to leave her children.

"We were really poor for a long time," says Williams. "But it wasn't an unhappy timeÉ . We were a very close family and had a lot of fun together." Williams describes building spaceships and Christmas trees from cardboard boxes. She says being poor "brings out creativity that you didn't even know that you had."

Williams was teaching computer classes part-time, "I love teaching, but there is no money in it, and it's time consuming," says Williams. So, she decided to write computer books. She wrote when the kids were asleep, and sometimes when they were with her. She remembers breast-feeding at the computer.

Ten publishers rejected Williams's first book. But that didn't stop her from self-publishing the book, and a second book as well. The books were successful, and got the attention of Peachpit Press. Today a prominent computer book publisher, Peachpit was just starting out then and was looking for more books. They offered her a $1,000 advance. That was thrilling for Williams, who, with her three children, was living on $12,000 a year.

Peachpit trusted Williams's knowledge and gave her complete control of the book. "I give them a lot of credit," says Williams, who adds, "We grew up together."

The books allowed Williams to spend a lot of time with her children. "Many women are finding that computers are a way to stay at home with their kids," she says. "Two hundred years ago, I would have brought mending and washing into the house. Today, I can bring computer work."

Since that time, Williams has published many computer books through Peachpit, including The Non-Designer's Design Book, The Little Mac Book, PageMaker 4: An Easy Desk Reference, Mac Edition (she also wrote a Windows edition),

Jargon, The Mac is Not a Typewriter, and A Blip in the Continuum: A Celebration of Grunge Typography, Windows Edition (she also wrote a Mac edition). She is currently working on The Little OSX Book.

Williams is a Mac-head; she is a great fan of the Macintosh computer. However, she does publish her books on both Macintosh and Windows platforms.

In Jargon, Williams writes that she was planning a move from Santa Rosa, California to Santa Fe. After reading the book, Santa Fe resident and fellow Mac-head John Tollett contacted her to assist him and David Rohr with beginning a Mac User Group in Santa Fe. She met with them at Santa Fe's Cloud Cliff Bakery in January 1994. (The group began meeting in March 1994.) That first meeting also began Tollett's and Williams's relationship. The couple has collaborated on several books, and resides together in Santa Fe.

Williams is currently the president of the Santa Fe Mac Users Group. At the Forum, the College of Santa Fe, the group meets once a month for educational and social purposes.

Computers are not Williams's only interest. For 23 years she has been researching Mary Sidney Herbert, the Countess of Pembroke, whom Williams believes wrote all of the Shakespeare plays. "The sonnets are all written to a man, that was my first clue," says Williams. She has hundreds of books on Shakespeare, Herbert, and others from that time period. The books line shelves in her library, which has a desk where Williams writes notes by hand. Once completed, Williams's book will describe how Herbert - not Shakespeare - wrote the plays and sonnets, and why she kept it secret.

While Shakespearean books take up half the room, the other half contains children's books. "We have lots of children's books," says Williams. "We were poor, but somehow I always found money to buy books."

Williams's computer is in a large room under the library. The room has several computer stations for her, her daughter, and Tollett. They all work together. There are extra stations for when Williams's sons visit. One is a Navy SEAL, the other a daycare instructor.

"I'm really glad that my kids saw what it took [for me] to become this way," says Williams. "They saw that it was me, and not my boyfriend or my husband. They saw how hard I worked." Williams advises women to "find what you love and what you're good at, and you'll find a way to make money at it. And if it's hard, so what? When it's easy, that's not when we grow."

Recently, Williams attended an alumni reception where she was asked to speak. Other speakers went up and thanked their spouse, their parents, and others.

Williams said, "I wish I could thank someone out there, but I can only thank myself. I did this all on my own." Her message to women: "You can, too."

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