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About the Author

 

 

 

Born in raised in suburban New Jersey, Nicki Krys Dietrich is an up-and-coming author and critic who has been penning her own works since she was fourteen.  Her first unpublished story, Until Time Ends, was featured at the Write Out Loud! Literacy Program at Monmouth University in 2009 and recieved raving reviews from teachers and students alike.  Her first novel is set to be published in late 2015.  She lives on the Jersey Shore with her family.

What should readers know about your stories before they read them?

 

Being a young writer, I find it very hard to keep anything I write PG, so everything usually comes out PG13 bordering on NC17 or R-rated.  What I write is not for kids, (then again, considering how early kids are learning about certain things, maybe…)

Ahem!

Anyway, some ingredients I often use are tobacco, alcohol, blood, drugs, romance, violence, and some emotional turmoil.  I don’t hold anything back when I write, so only people who can handle these things should read my stories.

 

What inspired you to write?

 

When I was in high school, I spent most of my time in the library due to a knee injury that prevented me from taking PE.  It was during this time that I read a book by Anne Rice called The Vampire Lestat and immediately fell in love with it.  This inspired a short story I ended up writing that I called “Until Time Ends”, which I never finished.  However, it was reading that book that got me started and gave birth to that first spark of creativity.

At the time I picked up Lestat, I was fourteen and a HUGE history nerd.  I had read everything in the History section and had a particularly soft spot for ancient Egyptian culture and an even stranger obsession with King Tut.  In fact, so much had been piled up into my head at that point that I needed an outlet for it and when I was seventeen, I began working on a small project about Tutankhamun that I would continue to pick at for years (I still haven't finished).  That was how I realized my calling for historical works.  I never looked back and I never stopped.  Writing soon became an addiction and a passion all at once.

 

Do your stories have a HEA (Happy-Ever-After)?

 

Of course!  I hate the stories that end on sad notes.

 

What do you hope readers take with them after reading one of your stories?

 

I love the possibility of happily ever after.  What I try to convey in these books, and remind myself of at the same time, is that no matter how bad life gets, there’s always a way for it to get better.  You just have to be open-minded and notice it.

 

What books have most influenced your life most?

 

There are so many! 

I have to give the most credit to Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles because those were what got me started, but I also read James Patterson, Michelle Moran’s Ancient Egyptian novels and the Stephanie Plum series’ as a teenager and loved Japanese manga, as I think every kid from my generation did at one point.  As a kid I loved Disney classics, like Aladdin and The Little Mermaid, which I think is responsible for the romantic elements dusted all over everything.  Other authors that inspire me are Edgar Alan Poe, JRR Tolkien, Carolly Erickson, Sandra Worth, Jane Austin, Stephen King, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Alison Weir, Josh Lanyon, Oscar Wilde, George RR Martin, and of course, Thomas Jefferson, whom I consider to be one of my biggest inspirations.

 

How much of your works are realistic?

 

As a perfectionist, I like my work to be accurate.  My historical works are usually right on the nose, but you have to make some things up or the story would be a fail, right?  I try to make everything as realistic as I can, whether it’s by lining up a timeline correctly or using actual scientific facts, but there are some things that just don’t work that way.  One specififc story that I'm working on, Darkshine, for example, is a fantasy, sort of a precursor to the Arthurian myths. Though I did use real weaponry and such, it is completely a made up tale based on snippets from historical and mythological events. If you look hard enough, you can tell what inspired each page, similar to George RR Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire series.

 

Do you have a specific writing style?

 

It depends on what I’m doing.  When I wrote Darkshine, I used a style similar to Anne Rice spiced with Jean Plaidy in a sense because that was what I was reading at the time.  I was also watching shows like BBC Robin Hood, The Tudors, SpartacusThe White Queen, and Borgia (both the Neil Jordan and Tom Fontana versions), and Game of Thrones was making it big on HBO, so I knew that if I was doing an historic work, even if it was a fantasy, that I had to use an historic perspective in my language. There is a challenge that writing hitorically brings that I thrive on.  

 

 

What book are you reading now?

 

I'm a compulsive reader so there's always something new and I tend to read pretty quickly.  I recently picked up I Hunt Killers by Barry Lyga, which is the first of a trilogy that follows a teenage boy who happens to be the son of an infamous serial killer.  I’m also reading Postmortem by Patricia Cornwell and finishing up The Heavens Rise by Christopher Rice.  

As you can see, I'm on a thriller binge right now and have become addicted to murder mysteries in particular.  I love books that get my pulse racing.

 

 

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