Guest Blogger Kristen Ashley
Let me start by saying I do not email or tweet about books and authors I love to get attention. It’s not about self-gratification. Contrary to popular belief (Janelle) I do not have stalker tendencies. (My emoticons don’t work when I’m creating posts but know there’d be a little grin after this!) What I do have is the memory of what it’s like to be starting out or even just writing in my bubble, feeling frustrated that it’s hard to reach new people, AND I have the heart of a reader. I’ve ALWAYS read but my real love affair with books began when I found Romance. So, now that I’ve reached a broad (but not broad enough IMO audience – b/c let’s face it, we all strive for more) – I have the driving need to contact authors whose works I find and love and tell them. Or to tweet about them. Or mention them on my FB page. I would hope that readers and authors would do the same for me. But I do it because I loved their books. I’m also always looking for new books to read – to that end – we always talk WHAT’RE YOU READING on Saturdays here – and sometime over the weekend, I ask the same question on my FB page, hoping to find a new – to – me author. One Saturday, someone said, “Carly, you must read the Dream Man series by Kristen Ashley.”
Who? So I headed to her website,(Click HERE to visit) browsed, then to Amazon, browsed some more, and downloaded Mystery Man on my Kindle. Let me be honest – these books had one big thing against them for me – First Person – usually a guaranteed NO READ for me – NOT ANY MORE. I started Mystery Man and I WAS HOOKED. Light. Fun. HOT ALPHA MEN. Did I mention HOT ALPHA MEN? A little insanity and MORE HOT ALPHA MEN. Kristen’s books are not short. They are LONG. And as she explains below, there are a lot of them because she wrote a ton before she published. This is excellent for me, who proceeded to GLOM all of the Dream Men books and then the ROCK CHICKS (do NOT miss the Rock Chicks and their men!). This Friday her next release, MOTORCYCLE MAN is out with Tack, who we met in a prior book. I can’t wait. And in the vein of the erotic romance frenzy, her current book, KNIGHT, is a very different take on a dominant man. HOT HOT HOT!
But I digress. (This has to be the LONGEST intro I’ve ever done for a guest blogger, LOL!) She talks about not getting writer’s block and I could hate her for that – except when you read her books, I think you’ll get why. She’s so uninhibited, her characters just FLOW.) I don’t hate her. I AM jealous though. Note – she loves CASTLE so she fits right in!
So anyway, give a warm jungle welcome to KRISTEN ASHLEY! And check out her books!
I never get writer’s block. I hesitate typing that because I’m certain doing it will mean I’ll put the whammie on myself. Still, it’s the truth. I never do.
Until a best-selling romance novelist invites me to be a guest blogger on her blog. When that happens, the ideas dry up.
So it came to me while driving a winding, English road, wracking my brain about blog ideas at the same time lamenting the news I read on Carly’s blog that Alcatraz is officially cancelled, yet gleeful The New Girl, Castle, Once Upon A Time, Grimm and the hot boy brothers Winchester of Supernatural will be back (yes, riding the emotional roller coaster, per usual).
And the idea that came to me amidst a head full of TV news: Carly Phillips asked me to be a guest blogger. I’ll write about that (in a way).
See, I started reading romance novels young. I mean young. I don’t even know how old I was. Maybe eleven. I’d steam through five, six Harlequins a week. I was a fixture at the library. I’d read anything. And love them. Favorites were Janet Daily and Penny Jordan. I graduated to Judith McNaught, Jude Devereaux and Johanna Lindsey. Then onto Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum which isn’t exactly romance but that doesn’t mean I’m not having a simultaneous love affair with Joe Morelli and Ranger.
Reading before bed as a young girl, I thought two things. One, I want with all my heart to be a romance novelist. And two, I figured I better have a “J” somewhere in my name if I wanted to be a good one.
What I didn’t realize was, living your dream doesn’t happen – KAPOW! A dream unfolds.
The “J” thing never happened. But some years ago, I started to put my stories down on the computer. I wrote and wrote and wrote. And by the time I finally self-published my first book, I had nearly twenty completed or nearly completed manuscripts on my computer.
Told you I didn’t get writer’s block. I also type fast.
Thus I embarked on a journey that was nail-biting, sometimes despairing, oftentimes self-questioning, but always underlying that, enjoyable.
It doesn’t happen just like that. You’ve heard it all before, it takes work, perseverance, yadda, yadda, yadda. But it’s not that. The process is slow and scary (but rewarding, though during the slow and scary parts, that’s hard to believe). Things happen. You get a reader. You get another one. Some fabulous blogger mentions you and introduces you to a bevy of folks. People follow you on Goodreads. People write to you and tell you what your stories mean to them. People follow you on Facebook and Twitter. Every day, the dream opens further, lighting your life, expanding your world. Then one day you wake up, make your coffee and oatmeal, sit down to your computer and get a message from a best-selling romance novelist telling you she enjoys your work and inviting you to be a guest blogger.
In your head, you think dreams are huge. But until you actually start living one, you can have no idea just how immense they are. Lying in bed all those years ago as a young girl wishing to spend my days weaving tales, I had absolutely no clue how enormous that dream would be once it came true. And as it’s coming true, I still don’t.
The thing is, you live your dream, it never ends and that’s the beauty of it. It gets bigger and bigger as each fold turns over and opens out but instead of this blocking out the light, it lets it in.
So here I sit, drinking coffee and writing a guest blog for a woman who does what I’ve always wanted to do and is a great success at it. And as I sit here, I’m pressing back another corner, expanding my world, letting in more light.
I wish for everyone that they can witness their own version of this beauty. But for me, I’d just like to say a heartfelt thanks to those who read my books for giving it to me. And to Carly, for shining more light down on me.
Fold back your dream, sisters. The light is awesome.
PS: Not too long ago, in an extraordinary turn of events, I was able to meet and get to know Penny Jordan, the novelist whose books fashioned my dream. She was a fabulous woman and will be missed for far more than her loss to our genre.
PPSS: And back to TV shows… For those who watch Castle, was that last episode not the bomb!? Holy cow! Talk about a rewind. Brilliant! I wanna be Kate Beckett when I grow up and only partially because the handsome and lovably goofy Richard Castle pushed her against a wall and kissed her. She rocks!
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
The winner of Janelle’s giveaway from Monday is:
Jane (Comment #41)
Congrats, Jane! All you have to do to claim your prize is email me at janelledenison @ sbcglobal.net with your mailing info!
