Her weekly pop music column, "Rock On" was soon picked up for national syndication and led to higher profile writing work, including concert reviews for Billboard magazine.
Work led her to Los Angeles, California, in 1983, where she became the editor of ROCK magazine, a reviewer for The Hollywood Reporter and Daily Variety, and a contributor to Elle, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal among others.
She soon became a staff writer for Renegade, Silk Stalkings, Players and Earth: Final Conflict, then Gene Roddenberry’s Andromeda, Adventure Inc. and The Hallmark Mysteries: Jane Doe.
[5] Inspired by a ROCK magazine article about the Monkees band member Michael Nesmith's mother, Bette Nesmith Graham, who invented Liquid Paper, ROCK editors Vare and Greg Ptacek co-wrote the "pop history" Mothers of Invention: Forgotten Women and their Unforgettable Ideas in 1988, followed in 1993 by Women Inventors and Their Discoveries, aimed at a middle-school readership.
[6] Vare later wrote a book for grade-school readers, Adventurous Spirit: A Story about Ellen Swallow Richards, about America's first female professional chemist.
Vare has written or edited biographies of pop culture figures including Frank Sinatra, Tom Cruise, Judy Garland and Barbra Streisand.
Vare's 2011 release is also her most autobiographical, Love Addict: Sex, Romance and Other Dangerous Drugs (HCI Books, 2011),[7] which developed out of her blog Affection Deficit Disorder.
"[8] In 2022 Ethlie Ann Vare became an early adopter of generative AI technology and used it to illustrate a children's book with paintings in the style of her late father, portrait artist Ben Herman.