Please help me welcome Ella J. Quince to my blog today.

Bio:
About Ella J. Quince: I was born and raised in Southern California where I still live with my husband and son. I was a veterinary technician for the past ten years, but am now retired. My husband is a federal firefighter which allows me to be at home with my son and focus on writing and reading. I love that my “job” consists of reading. It doesn’t get any better than that!

Take it away, Ella.

Publishing a book is an exciting and scary thing. When I first decided to write a book, it was to fill my own desires for what I wanted in a book, but it never occurred to me that I could be a writer and have a career as a writer until much later in life. Everyone wants things in life, we want to love the work we do, we want to earn money, and be comfortable and secure in the knowledge that we can afford the things we need like a home, a car, and food. We all want to provide for our families and maybe even have a little extra for the fun stuff. I come from a broken family with hard working parents. When I realized that at the age of twenty five I was making the same yearly income as my mother, who had been working for 38 plus years, it was a wakeup call.

College was an option, but working was more important. Getting a college education wasn’t pushed on me and at the time I didn’t see it as important although I did attend a local community college for about two and a half years. I regret that I didn’t finish with a degree, but at that time I wanted very different things. Once I started working and building my own financial responsibilities it became more and more difficult to be in a school mind set. I married young and moved up in a career that I loved less and less each year.

At twenty two I had a crisis. I was unhappy, I was in therapy, and I was nowhere near where I wanted to be. I overcame that crisis and for the first time to anyone admitted to my therapist that I wrote romance novels. Something changed in me. I needed to do things for my own happiness, actively pursue things that made me happy and stop just working for a paycheck. It still took a few years and a few stumbles before things really changed.

Fast forward. I have a newborn, a freshly edited novel, and I’m back at work at six weeks post-partum as a vet tech when something awesome happens! I discover a small e-publisher and submit my novel. They liked it! For the first time ever professional eyes will be helping me polish and publish my novel Mine, All Mine. It was a dream come true…kind of.

Commence the crash course in e-publishing. I absorb and write, absorb and write. I had a great first two months and a lot of fun promoting and interacting with readers and other authors. But along with that comes a realization about what kind of quality is needed to achieve success. By six months my sales are tanking and I’m not happy with my book as it is. Do I want to make money? Yes, but I want a career as a writer, I want success and to look back as an old woman and see a mile long trail of successful books behind me. I want to make readers feel the way I feel when I read a good romance novel. The giggling, the sighing, the infatuation with a fictional hero, I want to give that to readers like it is given to me by the authors I love. As a new author I am building the foundation for a lasting career. I am making mistakes, I am learning, and always, always, always writing (as much as I can with a wild toddler with a broken leg).

The foundation I am building (sometimes blindly) is getting stronger by the day. So much has happened in the last six months and I feel like I have changed. That change will be reflected in my pen name of which I will also be changing. I chose D.L. Rose to hide behind mysterious initials, but I don’t want to hide. I’m going to be bringing sexy, rule bending, Historical romances full of the tangled emotions we experience when falling in love. That is what I love to read and that is what I enjoy writing, despite what others think I should write. Normal is not fun. Why would I take a fiction novel and confine it in such strict, suffocating guidelines for a few sticklers? I am not trying to be Georgette Heyer or Jane Austen. I am not trying to be Stephanie Laurens, Lisa Kelypas, Eloisa James, or Julia Quinn. They inspire me, but the novels I write are the characters that live inside me, the hero’s that drive me crazy, the heroines who are the friends I wish I had, and the parts of me I wish were stronger. Some will like it, some will not. Oh well.

I would like to introduce you to Ella J. Quince. Ella, because Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine was the first fairytale that truly spoke to me and pushed me to put pen to paper as a hopelessly romantic fourteen year old girl. EJ is for Eloisa James and JQ for Julia Quinn. I own and will continue to buy everything they have written. They inspire me, make me laugh, make me cry, make me sigh over hero’s, and cheer on heroines. When I was a lonely wife with a sailor thousands of miles away, I read their books. When my sailor was home and glued to football/basketball/baseball/golf games, I read. When life sucks and I’m not strong enough to deal with it, I read. In the middle of class, I read, nursing my son, I read. Whenever I have even five minutes to spare, I read. It has made me late to work, gotten me in trouble in class, irritated my husband to no end (what was he thinking buying me a nook? He made buying books easier!). It is an integral part of me and now so is writing. Ella J. Quince is an expression of that love for reading and is the name I will use to share my writing.

I now have my rights back for Mine, All Mine and am making it the book it deserves to be. I am working with a great editor and will be re-releasing book 1 of my Fated for Love Series: Mine, All Mine July 15th! The second book in the series, Sweet Torture, will be released in September along with my New Adult novel: Slow Burn. If you would like to know the official release dates when they become available you can email me at ella@ejqbooks.com to be added to my mailing list. I have lots to do and lots of changes to make but it is so exciting and so rewarding!

Check out Mine, All Mine on July 15th 2013 at all the major digital retailers.

Two hearts blinded by desire.

Lilly must hide her identity to escape scandal and her criminal stepfather who has been accused of treason. She finds refuge in an aristocratic household only to discover the master of the house is a danger to her masquerade and to her heart.
Dominic is ordered to complete one last mission before he can embrace his new life and title. But while he must focus on his duties, he can’t help but be distracted by his lovely new cooks assistant. She is innocent to say the least, but her elusive nature and cultured speech drives him to wonder who the real Miss Millie James is.

Email me at ella@ejqbooks to join my mailing list for updates on new releases.
Visit my website and blog at http://www.ejqbooks.com
Friend me on Facebook, https://www.facebook.com/ella.j.quince

Thanks so much for visiting today, Ella. Wishing you much success.