Nicki’s First-ever blog entry

Yesterday, at the Miami Book Fair International, I spoke about Revenge of the Rose. I did this in the company of two lovely and talented fellow writers, Gina Nahai and Ellis Avery. Ellis discussed her debut novel, and Gina her fourth – and each was very on the ball. I wasn’t (if you’ve read Revenge of the Rose, you know why it is difficult to talk about it to a room full of people-who-haven’t-read-it-yet), so I opted to be Class Clown, which seemed to please. My humor was largely self-deprecating, prompting Gina to say, semi-jokingly, “You shouldn’t be allowed to do your own PR ever again – you are going to convince everyone not to read your books!”

The highlight of my day was a fly-on-the-wall moment: first thing in the morning, as I was sipping tea in the nearly-empty Authors’ Lounge, two men began to chat. I quickly realized that one of them was Scott Turow, and I eavesdropped delightedly as he talked about his approach to writing. A proudly mediocre banjo player, I harbor a desire to eventually be a big enough “name” that I’d qualify to play for the Rock Bottom Remainders (I don’t know how to put the URL links into this blog, but you should google them); Turow is a member and it took all of my self-restraint not to ask him for his autograph – not as author, but as member-of-musically-mediocre-but-energetically-awesome charity rock band.

I’m going to try to post this now. I have no idea how to allow comments, but if anyone stumbles upon this and wants to try, feel free…