Romance Author Karen Hulene Bartell

Please welcome Karen Helene Bartell. A fellow Wild Rose author, she writes historical Western romances. Today she talks about writing longhand, researching her stories, marketing strategies, and discovering a book title in Big Bend National Park.

Welcome Karen Hulene Bartell…

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Thanks so much for hosting me on your blog, Zara!

Is there an event in your life that affected you as a writer?

Ten years ago, I went to New Orleans for Mardi Gras and broke a baby finger catching beads. (Long story.) For six weeks, I wore a cast that came up to my elbow, and I was unable to type. As a result, I wrote longhand and discovered that my writing literally flowed. The keyboard only got in the way of my imagination. True, I then had to type it (after my cast came off), but the creative process has never gone more smoothly.

Where is your favorite place to write?

I write on a French Provincial desk I finished myself. The keyboard slides into a drawer, and the computer screen overhangs it. Two orange-striped cats are stretched out, covering half the desktop. An open travel brochure is within sight, calling to me for when the quarantine ends, and my WIP—Kyoto: Tale of the Fox—covers the desk’s other half.

How much research do you do for each book you write?

I enjoy researching, so I do quite a bit for each of my books. However, for Wild Rose Pass, set in 1880, I was forced to do more than usual. I traveled to the area, of course, but while at the historic fort, I researched dusty quartermaster reports for historical tidbits. I learned a friend’s great-great-grandfather, José Maria Bill, had not only worked as an Indian scout, guide, and packer for the fort in the 1870s, but had been captured as a young child and raised by Comanches.

 I also came across the records of a Colonel Benjamin Grierson, who began Army life as an enlisted man, was field promoted during the Civil War, and became the commanding officer at Fort Davis in the 1880s.

And I thought…

What if I combined Bill’s Comanche experiences  with Grier’s field promotion to create my fictional hero?

Voila! Ben Williams was born—Ben from Benjamin Grierson and Williams from the surname Bill. Research found not only the story, but the name.

How do you market your work? What avenues have you found to work best for your genre?

If I had unlimited funds for a blitz campaign, someone would be writing this blog for me, but since by necessity I’m a penny-pinching, DIY, wear-many-hats kind of author, here’s what’s worked for me so far.

Every month, I send out a newsletter to keep my readers interested and informed about upcoming books. I’ve learned cover photos only hold interest so long, but pictures of our dog or cats with the books captures attention. I also do newsletter shares. (If anyone’s interested, email me at info@karenhulenebartell.com.)

I create virtual tours via blogs and also do blog shares. (Again, if anyone’s interested, email me at info@karenhulenebartell.com.)

I post on Facebook and Twitter. And thanks to helpful WRP authors, have learned how to post on Instagram <grin>. Again, photos of pets with the latest release gains the most attention.

From religiously reading the posts on wrppromo@groups.io, I’ve picked and chosen what promos would most likely to work for me. This time around, I contacted AuthorsXP to help organize a Street Team. About twenty people signed on to promote my upcoming release. To their ranks, I invited several personal friends to join.

The results are still out on these tactics, but I hope the tips I’ve shared help raise your sales numbers.

How did you come up with the title?

Sixteen years ago, my husband and I spent Christmas week hiking and horseback riding in Big Bend National Park. Driving home early that New Year’s morning, we missed the turnoff in Alpine and followed TX-118 north. Snow-covered and glinting against the frosty blue January sky, a remote jumble of mountain peaks and ranges beckoned as they rose above the desert floor. I was enchanted. Gazing at the sky island for the first time, wide-eyed, I wondered whether those rocky pinnacles were mirages or optical delusions.

But as the craggy peaks loomed larger (a mile high, I later learned), I realized they were no hallucination or Fata Morgana. A hasty glance at the map told us these were the Davis Mountains. As we approached, vertical basalt columns rose like thousands of giant fingers reaching for the sky. The palisades, buttes, and bluffs towered above both sides of the highway with a raw, majestic beauty, and I breathed a contented sigh, sensing a homecoming. A sign said Wild Rose Pass, and a title was born.

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Wild Rose Pass by Karen Hulene Bartell

 Cadence McShane, free-spirited nonconformist, yearns to escape the rigid code, clothes, and sidesaddles of 1880s military society in Fort Davis, Texas. She finds the daring new lieutenant exhilarating, but as the daughter of the commanding officer, she is expected to keep with family tradition and marry West Point graduate James West.

Orphaned, Comanche-raised, and always the outsider looking in, Ben Williams yearns to belong. Cadence embodies everything he craves, but as a battlefield-commissioned officer with the Buffalo Soldiers instead of a West Point graduate, he is neither accepted into military society nor considered marriageable.

Can two people of different worlds, drawn together by conflicting needs, flout society and forge a life together on the frontier?

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Excerpt:

Cadence gingerly accepted Ben’s hand, but the moment their fingers touched, static electricity bolted up her wrist and along her arm, making the downy hairs stand on end. Bolts of energy raced toward her shoulder, tingling and raising the hairs on the back of her neck. Then she shivered as the shock waves barreled down her spine, and butterflies tickled her stomach. She glanced at her hand in his. As if a part of her that had been lost was reconnected, the two melded into one.

Does he feel the connection, too? She gazed into his eyes and saw the same intensity. As he put his left hand on her waist, she responded with a light shudder. Dreamlike, she rested her hand on his shoulder, and off they danced as if they prepared for this moment all their lives. When the music’s tempo increased, she held on tighter, dancing in perfect unison as her body pressed ever closer, instinctively responding to his subtle dips and sways. After making several rounds on the dance floor, she turned toward him, breathless. “I didn’t know you could dance.”

“You mean waltz?” He chuckled. “I’ve joined in Comanche dances around campfires most of my life.”

Laughing, she let herself be swept away in yet another dizzying round.

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 Buy Links:

Amazon eBook: https://amzn.to/2vQP41r

Amazon Paperback: https://amzn.to/2VCtCYy

Barnes & Noble NOOK Book: https://bit.ly/32zhDfZ

Barnes & Noble Paperback: https://bit.ly/2T1V3JM

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Learn More About Karen Hulene Bartell

Author of the Trans-Pecos, Sacred Emblem, Sacred Journey, and Sacred Messenger series, Karen is a best-selling author, motivational keynote speaker, wife, and all-around pilgrim of life. She writes multicultural, offbeat love stories that lift the spirit. Born to rolling-stone parents who moved annually, Bartell found her earliest playmates as fictional friends in books. Paperbacks became her portable pals. Ghost stories kept her up at night—reading feverishly. The paranormal was her passion. Westerns spurred her to write (pun intended). Wanderlust inherent, Karen enjoyed traveling, although loathed changing schools. Novels offered an imaginative escape. An only child, she began writing her first novel at the age of nine, learning the joy of creating her own happy endings. Professor emeritus of the University of Texas at Austin, Karen resides in the Hill Country with her husband Peter and her “mews”—three rescued cats and a rescued *Cat*ahoula Leopard dog.

Connect with Karen:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KarenHuleneBartell

Twitter: https://twitter.com/KarenHuleneBart

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/explore/tags/karenhulenebartell/

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/611950.Karen_Hulene_Bartell

Website: http://www.KarenHuleneBartell.com/

Email: info@KarenHuleneBartell.com

Amazon Author Page: https://www.amazon.com/author/karenhulenebartell

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/karenhulenebartell/

BookBub: https://www.bookbub.com/profile/karen-hulene-bartell

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/karenhulenebartell/

AUTHORSdb: https://authorsdb.com/community/17847-karen-hulene-bartell

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Karen Hulene Bartell would love to hear from you.

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