Amazon Bestselling Romance Author
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Hi All,
Leaving beautiful Soriano nel Cimino today and going back to Rome for the New Year! I have many beautiful pictures and dreams of knights and heroines to bring home with me. The ghosts of these people walk the streets and night and call to me to write their love stories!
My First Books Are here:
Please enjoy!
I go back in time, to the year 1276 to have a short speak with Ann and Marcus. They insist we chat while soaking in their ancient Roman bathhouse and I have to agree, it’s heavenly.
It’s odd to get naked with my characters, but I am sitting so that I am mostly concealed under the water. I wish Marcus would do so as well, but every so often he pushes up with hands to the edge, and gracefully exits. I can’t help but stare at his magnificent warrior’s physique.
When he eases back in with the grace of a cat, I start my questions with Ann. “I hear you are with child?”
She beams and rubs her swollen belly. “Indeed I am. Do you know if it’s a boy or girl?”
I do, but won’t spoil the surprise. “No, no. We will find out together in book two.”
“Book two? You mean for us to have another adventure? I believe I would rather not” Her mouth purses and turns down into a pout.
Marcus glares at me. “I thought we were safe in happily-ever-after.”
I swallow hard. “Well, yes and no. That’s why I’m here. Sir Thomas is going to need your help, Marcus. Ann, I’m afraid you will be stuck minding hearth and home.”
Her eyes dart to Marcus, no doubt waiting for him to agree but he seems mollified for a moment. “That hardly seems just.”
I clear my throat. “I know, but you’ll be pregnant with your third child… and it doesn’t seem right to have you off on an adventure to Scotland. Besides, who’ll mind your villagers?”
She settles back into the water with a happy face and reaches for a clay pot. “Three children? Very well. As long as you agree that my husband will not meet with ill fortune.”
I nod and turn such that I face the tub wall, not wanting to show my body to my characters. After all, I am author-god. I should look a hell of a lot more… god-like. “There will be some perilous moments but not so much for him as for Thomas.”
Grabbing soap salts, she begins to scrub my back with a linen cloth. “Sir Thomas? I thought you sent him to parts unknown. To trade for the king.”
The lavender scent is heavenly. “I did, but I had to bring him home. You know the lovely maid he’s been eyeing all summer? I’m afraid she is with child.”
Marcus growls and glances at his sword lying beside the pool. “I shall gut him from chin to-. Bring him back this instant. First there must be a wedding.”
I turn, put my palms up in the air in supplication, then quickly duck back down. “Well that’s just the point of the story. It’s going to be five years before I can get him back.”
“Absolutely unacceptable. By God, I won’t have any knight of mine making a chit pregnant.”
“Be reasonable. I cannot. He’s south of Rome by now, and makes his way to the east where neither pigeon, nor messenger can catch him.”
“Oh my. Well, we’ll just have to make the best of it.” Ann hops out of the water, dons her tunic, and rushes out the door in bare feet.
Marcus follows at a slower pace, sparing one glance back at me. “There better be another happily-ever-after, or heads will roll”
I lean back into the heated baths and sigh. That went quite well.
First… let me get your attention…..
and a few more just to be sure….
Awesome.
When Soul Mate Publishing approached me with a contract and told me I would be doing my own marketing, I almost didn’t sign.
WHAAAAA???? “I don’t know anything about marketing,” I said. “How in the world will I ever figure it out?”
My editor assured me I would do fine.
I’m one of those A+ overachiever types, so when I put my John Hancock on the dotted line, I challenged myself to learn EVERYTHING I needed to know about marketing in three months. That was my release date.
Some people have asked what I did to rise so high in the rankings so here goes.
I asked other writers what they were doing. I knew I only should’ve been asking VERY successful writers what they were doing but I didn’t know any very successful writers. In fact, I didn’t know any writers at all. Crap.
I researched online and hired a consultant for an hour. Enter Jane Friedman. We talked, she gave me a list of places to research, and I was off and running. I think I probably could’ve found everything she said on her website, but, it just felt SO GOOD to talk to someone.
“Most important,” she said, “you need reviews. Ask friends, go to review websites, and research.”
“Okay. I can do that.” I had no idea how hard that would be.
“What next?”
“Blog site, website, Goodreads, Pinterest, Facebook, Twitter Account.”
I remember thinking at that point, I could just hire all this out so I said, “No Problemo.”
Blithely I left that conversation thinking I had it all down until…I saw how much money these services cost to hire out. Wow.
Okay. I’m a programmer. How hard could it be? Hahahahahhaha. Famous last words. Did I mention I’m an overachiever? Over the next three months I ticked one thing after another off my list.
Realizing I needed some more help, I hired Hajni at Substance Books. I could tell you what she told me to do, but then I’d have to kill you. Seriously? She is SO WORTH the small fee she asks.
Her method, however, is very much show and tell at the basic level I pay for. She gives instructions and I do it.
Thusly armed, I thought I had it down, but I didn’t. I felt like a parrot. Buy my book. Buy my Book. Everything that I’d read not to do and say, I did.
Connect? Virtually? Sounds like an Oxymoron? Right? But on Mother’s Day, I saw this tweet. “Next person to tweet me, I will give a review to.”
I tweeted back, “Me Me ME. PICK ME! Oh oh oh.”
She virtually laughed. We’ve become the best of virtual friends and now I get it.
Connect with your fans.
That’s it. I have fun. I tweet out stuff that makes me laugh and feel positive.
I pin things on Pinterest that look like scenes or people in my book… and yea.. some other stuff too.
I still work 40 hours on my day job. I still write for 20 hours a week. I still work out for seven.
Most everything else, that adds no value to my life, I’ve had to let go.
Know what the coolest thing is?
I REALLY LIKE IT!
Last weekend I read and reviewed a book by a woman, about my age, who lives with Bipolar. We exchanged a few emails. The weekend before I tweeted to a woman who has been a ‘mum’ to a child who has grown into the body of a man, but with the mind of a toddler.
These are remarkable heroines with incredible strength and I am blessed to have their lives intersect with mine, even so briefly. I am changed just by knowing them.
Everyone knows that likes attract so I humbly pondered how I got here.
Long ago, I remember my first foray into goal-setting. I had chastised a younger worker for his shoddy work on the repair of a video tape machine. My boss figured I needed a few lessons in how to deal with people and sent me off to a Dale Carnegie course. About the same time, the company decided we needed to be more productive, and a few of us headed off to NYC for a course in Time Management.
Of course, they sent me home with brochures to buy tapes, (it was the eighties), and more self-help tapes. I gobbled everything down because I was starving. I was thirty, stuck in a job I hated, had two young kids, a mortgage, and no way out. I cried a lot.
It took a lot of hard work to change my thoughts but I did. After my thoughts changed, my life changed, and here I am.
Where am I? Content. Not complacent, by any means, but most of the time, pretty happy.
When I need to ‘pay it forward,’ I write about strong women, facing adversity. A romance is the perfect place to do it. If thoughts become reality, (and I believe they do), then my life’s goal is to empower women as they imagine themselves as my heroines.
That makes me happy.
2 CommentsAs a dutiful author, this morning I did a Google search using the key words: ‘Romance Novel Review Requests 2015.’ ‘How to Train Your Knight’ needs to get to fifty reviews to gain in the Amazon rankings.
I read through one reviewer’s likes and dislikes, and she fumed inside my head. “What does that mean, she doesn’t like damaged heroines?”
I tried to calm her down and stopped typing. “I’m sure she meant no offense. There’s lots of other-”
“Stop right there, Stella, Put me down for review. I am not damaged.”
I sighed and went to make my oatmeal. This could be a long conversation. “Technically, getting abused by your first husband, almost to the point of death, counts as damaged.”
“Not so. I am completely healed. And happily married with two children and one on the way.”
“Yes, yes. I agree, but not at the start of the book. Don’t you remember?”
“Well I think that’s just wrong. Characters who grow strong through the course of a novel should not be called damaged.“
“I agree.” I read forward a bit on that same page, glad we’d settled the issue
“Wait a second… She likes damaged heroes? How in God’s Blood is that fair?” She virtually screeched inside my brain.
“Listen, everyone’s entitled to an opinion.” I quickly went to the next site and began the process of filling in a form.
“But it’s downright insulting. She allows Marcus his bad dreams but not me?”
“Now, now. You’ve got lots of excellent reviews, Ann. Many women applaud your endless energy, devotion to your town, and the way you handle Sir Marcus. We’ll find some more accommodating and understanding reviewers, okay? Some people just don’t get the courage it takes to be truly happy and content despite adversity in the past, but I do.”
I looked at the clock. I still had to get dressed and ready for work.She snorted and left my head.
Thank God.
Read about Ann in ‘How To Train Your Knight’
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How To Train Your Knight
Stella Marie Alden
Soul Mate Publishing, Macedon, NY 14502
ASIN: B00WRNKOOU $2.99 Free with Kindle Unlimited
www.stellamariealden.com http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00WRNKOOU
D. Donovan, Senior Reviewer, Midwest Book Review
Most medieval novels don’t offer up a steamy romance theme; but then, How To Train Your Knight isn’t your usual historical novel, but offers a gripping love story set in 1276 that opens with the bang of a screaming woman accosting Sir Marcus Blackwell, a holy crusader forced into a marriage with a foul-tempered widow.
Lies, ladies, she-witches, murder and love are vividly portrayed as characters are well-developed and dialogue and description nicely done to capture the sounds, scents, feel and lingo of Medieval times (without resorting to confusing vernacular, which makes for an exceptionally smooth read).
Where other romances would fall into modern description, How To Train Your Knight stays true to its times, tailoring its graphic sexual encounters with a sense of the decorum and trappings of Medieval times. From the period clothing of the era which is removed with a different touch (“…finally he undid the leather ties holding the three sheaves, and her knives clunked to the floor.”) to a woman’s acceptance of the pleasure involved in making babies (which doesn’t translate to the usual confession to a priest if a husband is involved), Stella Marie Alden excels at presenting powerful protagonists who both express their sexuality and discover riches of the heart in the process.
Because romance is the key, binding factor in How To Train Your Knight, audiences should be genre readers looking for a healthy dose of history to spice the steamy interludes. These factors contribute to a powerful story line that is as much about sexual awakening and love as it is about the process of becoming a powerful partner and surviving the medieval world.
Leave a CommentHow To Train Your Knight- credit to D. Donovan, Senior Reviewer, Midwest Book Review
Most medieval novels don’t offer up a steamy romance theme; but then, How To Train Your Knight isn’t your usual historical novel, but offers a gripping love story set in 1276 that opens with the bang of a screaming woman accosting Sir Marcus Blackwell, a holy crusader forced into a marriage with a foul-tempered widow.
Lies, ladies, she-witches, murder and love are vividly portrayed as characters are well-developed and dialogue and description nicely done to capture the sounds, scents, feel and lingo of Medieval times (without resorting to confusing vernacular, which makes for an exceptionally smooth read).
Where other romances would fall into modern description, How To Train Your Knight stays true to its times, tailoring its graphic sexual encounters with a sense of the decorum and trappings of Medieval times. From the period clothing of the era which is removed with a different touch (“…finally he undid the leather ties holding the three sheaves, and her knives clunked to the floor.“) to a woman’s acceptance of the pleasure involved in making babies (which doesn’t translate to the usual confession to a priest if a husband is involved), Stella Marie Alden excels at presenting powerful protagonists who both express their sexuality and discover riches of the heart in the process.
Because romance is the key, binding factor in How To Train Your Knight, audiences should be genre readers looking for a healthy dose of history to spice the steamy interludes. These factors contribute to a powerful story line that is as much about sexual awakening and love as it is about the process of becoming a powerful partner and surviving the medieval world.
Leave a CommentMarcus was up and comfortably saddled before dawn the next day. When his wife appeared from out of the bathhouse, the sun had not yet appeared, but a soft yellow light had spread across the sky.
“Not a word from you.” He eyed Charles with suspicion. The stable lad responded with a wide-eyed nod, just as she ran across the green and into the church.
“I’ll be right back. Keep Midnight in readiness.” He dismounted and gave his disappointed horse a pat on the rump. Entering the stone abbey by the back door, he was surprised to land in the monk’s quarters. The sparse room held a table, a clay lamp, two pallets, a hearth, and some furs. James, kneeling quietly in prayer, stood slowly, frowned, and regarded him with a furrowed brow.
“I’m sorry to disturb you, but I’d like to join the mass unseen.” Marcus held palms open and up.
“What’re you up to, Blackwell? I’m not sure we’re on the same side. Lady Ann has been like a daughter to me and the manner of your wedding pleased me not.”
“Truly?” He raised his eyebrows. “I’ve yet to even enter relations with her. I’m the one who should be affronted. She’s the one who’s dressed as a lad, running about like a wild hellcat. I’m merely watching out for her safety. How does the church allow it?”
James regarded him for a moment more and gave a quick nod. He led him down a narrow stone hallway to a pew set up behind the altar and out of view of the congregation. “Blessings upon you, my son. And good luck.”
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