Early in her career, Rabe worked as a newspaper reporter and bureau chief for the Quincy Herald-Whig in Quincy, Illinois, then for the Evansville Courier & Press in Evansville, Indiana, and then as a stringer for the Rockford Register Star. She went on to work for TSR, Inc., and was the Director of the RPGA. For TSR, she wrote magazine articles and novels, and wrote and edited Dungeons & Dragons and Gamma World gaming modules. Rabe became the editor of a BattleTech magazine, MechForce Quarterly, in 1995. For Dragonlance, TSR had Rabe write the next major event in Krynn history after Dragons of Summer Flame, resulting in the Dragons of a New Age trilogy, which began with TSR's The Dawning of a New Age. When Wizards of the Coast purchased TSR, they published the rest of Rabe's trilogy before bringing back Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman as the main chroniclers of Dragonlance. Her Dragons of a New Age trilogy consisted of Dawning of a New Age, Day of the Tempest, and Eve of the Maelstrom. Her other Dragonlance work includes Maquesta Kar-Thon, co-authored with Tina Daniell, and The Silver Star. Her other work for TSR includes Red Magic, Secret of the Djinn, and Night of the Tiger. Rabe worked with Janet Pack on The Forces of Dagnarus for the Sovereign Stone role-playing game. She has also written short stories in the Dragonlance, Forgotten Realms, and Star Wars settings, and for DAW Books. Rabe has written more than four dozen short stories. She has written science fiction stories for Martin H. Greenberg's office in Green Bay, Wisconsin, and coedited a number of all-original anthologies with Greenberg for DAW. Rabe has written articles for On The Lake, a local magazine for tourists. Rabe was the business manager and later the editor of the bimonthly SFWA Bulletin, published by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. In June 2013, Rabe resigned the post in the course of a controversy about alleged sexism in SFWA Bulletin articles written by, among others, Mike Resnick and Barry N. Malzberg.
Awards
Dragonlance: Death March was nominated for the 2009 Special Gaming Scribe Award for Best Original gaming-related tie-in novel. The Scribe awards are given out by the International Association of Media Tie-in Writers. In 2005, Rabe served as a juror for the Andre Norton Award for young adult fiction, which was established that year.
Star Wars
Three of her Star Wars short stories, "The Breath of Gelgelar", "Day of the Sepulchral Night", and "The Farrimmer Cafe", have been published in the Star Wars Adventure Journals.
Dragonlance Series
1995 Maquesta Kar-Thon, with Tina Daniell
1996 The Dawning of a New Age, Dragons of a New Age series
1997 Day of the Tempest, Dragons of a New Age series
1998 Eve of the Maelstrom, Dragons of a New Age series
