Nicki Elson's Not-So-Deep Thoughts

Check out the...er, unusual reviews for Debra Anastasia's Fire Down Below: So, you know when someone says "Ew, gross. Smell this," And then, for some inexplicable reason you do? Well, I smelled it. And you can read my review at Goodreads .   #‎FireDownBelow ▴Amazon US ➜ amzn.to/1HvQywp   ▴Amazon UK ➜ amzn.to/1DgCa4U   ▴Amazon AU ➜ bit.ly/1CkOCDU   ▴KoBo ➜ bit.ly/166Xtej   ▴iBooks ➜ bit.ly/1Kfvpmh   ▴B&N ➜ TBA There are a lot of eyes in Debra Anastasia’s house in Maryland. First, her own creepy peepers are there, staring at her computer screen. She’s made two more sets of eyes with her body, and the kids they belong to are amazing. The poor husband is still looking at her after 17 years of marriage. At least he likes to laugh. Then the freaking dogs are looking at her—six eyeballs altogether, though the old dog is blind. And the cat watches her too, mostly while knocking stuff off the counter an...

On Saturday, I'll have been a published romance author for five years. Throughout those five years, I've often sensed the disdain that accompanies utterance of the term "romance" in the literary world. It's so far beneath all those other genres of real fiction, right? At my local library, the used book shelf sells old VHS tapes---that most people can't even play anymore---for a dollar, while used romance books sell for ten freaking cents. Kinda gives a girl a complex. So I was ecstatic to get a bit of vindication this past weekend when I sat on a panel called Real Life/Real Love at the first annual Elgin Literary Festival. While one panelist wanted to make it very clear that she wrote (highly esteemed) literary fiction and not (blechy) romance, edgy YA romance superstar Simone Elkeles  explained why romance is the hardest genre to write. I'm paraphrasing here, but essentially what Simone said was that at the beginning of a romance novel, or often from ...

Has anyone out there not heard of IWSG yet? If so, learn all about it here . Thank you Alex J. Cavanaugh for bringing us all together! I know everyone has their own writing process and that what works for one person may not work for another, but I've just realized another benefit to the plow-through-the-first-draft-no-looking-back approach, and I want to share it with you.  I write this way because I learned that if I don't, I'll never finish anything. I get too caught up in editing, so I simply can't let myself do it until version one of the story is all out of me. That's benefit #1. As I work on the second draft of my current WIP, I've seen benefit #2 in action. Since I didn't spend time re-re-re-re-reading chapters to mold and polish along the way, I'm able to attack this draft almost like a first time reader. I think with all writers, the more times we read our own words, the more attached to them we become and the more right they sound to us no...

I'm so excited to feature a brand new novella---just released today!---by Rumer Haven. Rumer has such a lovely way of painting stories with words, and this particular story features one of my favorite twists ever in a romance. It's a perfect short read for Valentine's season.  FOUR SOMETHINGS & A SIXPENCE by Rumer Haven Adult Contemporary Romance Available February 3, 2015   from Battered Suitcase Press (an imprint of Vagabondage Press) SUMMARY : One wedding. Six participants. Be they sitting in the pews or standing at the altar, bearing witness in person or only in spirit, each of them knows something about the unsmiling bride. Go ahead—offer them a sixpence for their thoughts, and they'll make you these vows: One would love to declare this woman his “awfully wedded wife.” One fears what she already has and will have to hold—if not from this day forward, then soon. One takes her to be richer, not poorer. One is better for what she told...