Author Interview – Karen S. Bell @KarenSueBell

Tell us a bit about your family.

I am married and have four grown children and three grandchildren. My youngest daughter is an opera singer living in Germany, and one of my two sons is an actor married to a model/actress and they live in LA. My other son and oldest daughter live in the DC area. I live in Florida, so right now my immediate family under my roof are my two little kitties that bring my husband and I such joy. They are our furry kids.

What are you most proud of in your personal life?

What springs to my mind first and foremost, are my kids, my adult children. They are decent, loving, great parents, and also very brave. My son had the guts to move to LA and follow his bliss and the same for my daughter leaving all that was familiar and moving overseas to find work. By coincidence the other two wound up in the DC area. Neither had grown up there. They relocated on their own, found work, and made lives for themselves. Quite inspirational. But also makes family Sunday dinners at my house nonexistent. After that, there’s the awesome knowledge that I actually fulfilled a life’s goal and wrote two books. Wow!

What is hardest – getting published, writing or marketing?

Definitely getting published and then marketing. Turns out even with writer’s block, the writing is the easy part. After a million rejections, you finally go the self-publishing route but you need computer skills, which I have but there is still a learning curve with all the eformats. Then the marketing, how to get the word out without spending a fortune? That’s very challenging. Where to advertise? I’m learning that some venues are really worthless. The only one making money is the owner of these sites selling ads to naive people like me who think that sales will follow the ad. I just bought an ad on one site and got zero sales. Won’t do that again. But some sites are very good. So you learn by trial and error.

Do you plan to publish more books?

I believe I have one more book in me and I’ve started on it. Part of me is thinking of making it a trilogy. Pandering to the popular trends. Readers seem to love trilogies. So I will write it and if it seems there is enough stuff for three books, that’s what I’ll do. Then I’m done because I’m getting quite old now and I don’t pop books out quickly.

What else do you do to make money, other than write? It is rare today for writers to be full time…

I’m lucky , I was full time employed as an editor for a large accounting firm when I wrote my first book, WALKING WITH ELEPHANTS. Then I retired and finished my second novel SUNSPOTS. My dear husband still works and buys me great things like the iMac that I use for my writing. I am truly blessed. I think he believes it’s a good investment, not because I could become a bestselling author, but because writing keeps me out of the mall!

Buy Now @ Amazon

Genre – Contemporary romance, Magical Realism

Rating – PG-13

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Quality Reads UK Book Club Disclosure: Author interview / guest post has been submitted by the author and previously used on other sites.