A Newton mother and published novelist will participate in a book signing in northwest Iowa Saturday to promote her romance series as well as launch a new series of books.
Marci Bolden, the pen name for Marci Clark, will make an appearance at the Northern Iowa Book Bash in Clear Lake. Bolden will be promoting her fourth book in her romance fiction series titled “Stonehill.”
Bolden is about to re-release the series set in the suburbs of an Iowa city. She also plans to release her newest series “HEARTS,” chronicling a group of women and their love interests who work together to solve seemingly unsolvable crimes.
Releases include “A Life Without Water,” a finalist in the ScreenCraft Cinematic Book Contest, and “Unforgettable You.”
Bolden recently began working with the publishing company Pink Sand Press to get her work more exposure to a wider audience. Bolden said she worked with many small publishing companies, seeing them go out of business one-by-one. She then decided to try self-publishing.
“I was about ready to give up on writing as far as making it my main goal. I was pretty downtrodden on the self-publishing thing,” Bolden said. “Pink Sand really came in the nick of time.”
Bolden graduated from Grand View University with two bachelor’s degrees — one in journalism and the other in public relations. By the time she finished school, Bolden had a love for journalism, writing features for Iowa Living Magazine. Long-term, however, she wanted to write books.
“I am a fantastic features writer. I started working for Iowa Living Magazine doing features because I had a flair for that kind of personal connection story,” Bolden said. “It was inevitable that I was going to start writing books.”
Bolden and her husband moved to Newton in 2007, where she was able to write and work from home, sometimes taking an office job to pay the bills while raising a daughter who is about to graduate from Newton High School and another who is entering NHS. Her first book was published in 2012 before she earned her master’s degree in publishing from the University of Houston in 2014.
“I’ve always worked from home. I’ve been very lucky that way,” Bolden said. “My husband has been very supportive of my dreams and my goals. I’ve always been able to find ways to work from home.
“I spent a lot of last year focused on building my own business, doing editing and other services for other writers,” Bolden added. “I did a lot of freelance work.”
Through her freelancing and attempts to get published, whether in romance, mystery or suspense, Bolden has always attempted to pitch books that have strong women as characters. She said several publishing companies turned her down because they felt her characters were too strong, and today she is excited her “HEARTS” series is finally coming out.
“I’m really excited because I think that was the series that caught the attention of my publisher. I had a lot of rejections on that because they said my women were too strong and too independent,” Bolden said. “I refused to change that, so I was set to self-publish that series.”
If Bolden could give other aspiring writers any advice, it would be to build your connections and not give up.
“Keep writing. Keep trying to find the right person to accept your work and believe in your work. I think if I had gone with one of those other publishers that wanted HEARTS and changed it, I never would’ve been happy with what it was,” she said. “It’s important to have a group of people. Not just one person, but a group who will support you and tell you to keep going when you want to give up.”
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