Hiya friends, I've been dying to introduce you all to my new friend/author STELLA LANG.
Stella is the wonderful writing team of Danielle Norman & the man behind the woman Rusty. They've teamed up to become a sassy, sexy, opinionated author named Stella, who writes the quickie filthy insta-love that we all like to indulge in. So I dropped Dani & Rusty a line and quizzed them up and down and inside out to get all the down low gossip on Stella to share with you all... Enjoy.
WWW.AUTHORSTELLALANG.COM
So Dani, why did you decide to branch out into insta-love and why as Stella?
Can I just say Rusty? It was his idea. There has been a lot of changes in the erotic category (authors being removed) so I knew there was room. I didn’t want to convolute my Danielle readers and mix contemporary with the erotic so we created a second brand.
RUSTY - growing up in who knows where USA, did young rusty fill in that quiz at school stating when he grew up he wanted to be a fireman, president, rocket scientist and romance author in that order or was author higher up and you're only finding your voice now?
I’ve written professionally all of my engineering career but who in the world wants to read boring techno-babble. Being a lover of suspense/thriller/mystery, I always marvelled at those who possess the skill of story telling. The fact that I struggled to form a coherent or interesting sentence is what pushed me into writing fiction. Being married to a romance author doesn’t hurt either.
So how was it different writing together as opposed to how you've written and published in the past?
I had to take into account someone else’s perspective, weird that I wasn’t the boss. In the engineering world, I typically was the only author so the sky was the limit for me. Writing in the fiction world, I knew I should yield to Dani’s experience and for the record, Dani is never—not the boss…
Poor Rusty, never gets to be the boss... lol.
RUSTY - really what did Dani promise you to become half of Stella?
You bring up a good point. Maybe I should have negotiated something, but I didn’t. We have talked about starting a project like this for a while though the exact nature of the implementation took a bit of time to gel. With the holidays around, I had some spare time to give it a go. I’m glad I did.
DANI - how is Rusty's male point of view different from your male point of view when writing?
His sucks. There is like no romance or anything we want as women. I guess in other words it is more realistic.
RUSTY - admit it you wrote the girl parts?
The way this book started is I wrote the complete rough draft, cover-to-cover. Then Dani swept in and fixed it. We both contributed to the story and our individual styles can be found throughout the work. No discrete dividing lines.
So insta-love is generally a young innocent girl being introduced to sex by an alpha male with a large cock and even larger ego....all that call me daddy stuff. Comet and Vixen are both experienced and both alpha, how/why did you decide to buck the norm?
It’s Stella, is she the norm? Truthfully it was a brand decision, my brand is strong women and I wasn’t willing to compromise on that.
As one of the two males on earth that read romance, my input is I don’t find the typical insta-love branding interesting or hot. I gravitate to strong women, I love a challenge. I also don’t find the virgin trope interesting. There seems to be far more story possibilities when both partners bring it.
So how has Stella Lang been received so far? It's only been a few days but I know I loved it. Are others jumping on the S.L. bandwagon?
Really well, I’m sort of shocked.
We launched this project with almost no fanfare or warning in the holiday dead zone for the U.S. I’ve been very pleased with the amount of readers we’ve pulled in from outside Dani’s brand.
RUSTY - will we see you at signings anytime soon under the Stella Lang banner? (I kinda want an autograph).
Up to Dani…. I would love to be at signings so yes I will be there eventually—though I need to work on my autograph (my handwriting looks like that of a two year old).
DANI - You're such a big alpha personality as an author, who wore the creative pants for Stella?
Really we both did. I think that my voice is strong and those that read me will be able to hear me in them such as some of the banter. But also the through line, “this is where the magic begins.
Were there things you clashed on in the process?
Ummm no, it is my way.
Ummm, no comment.
What's next for Stella Lang?
Orlando Suns, a professional football team.
Been fun developing the world for this coming project. There should be plenty of room for story flexibility.
Rusty do your friends/colleagues/random well wishers know you're a romance author?
They do. And my involvement in Dani’s brand has never been a secret.
RUSTY - I know there's a lot of Dani in her D.N. books, is there much of your personality in Stella books?
Yes. Dani and I share a lot in terms of personalities so there is a lot of common ground. I like strong women so I wrote the draft with a strong woman and Dani put a bow on her.
So there you have it, all the deep dirt and in depth info on the 'birth' of an author. It's been great to hear from Danielle and Rusty how they became Stella. And by the way, I've read On Comet - their debut Christmas quickie and it's fantastic. So if you're looking for a hot sassy quickie jump over to Kindle and try out the new girl on the block. I promise you won't regret it.
Enjoy Ninja friends.
