Nicky Charles is an independent writer/publisher who became an author quite by accident. She always saw herself as a ‘reader not a writer’ and can thank—or blame, depending on the day—her friend/editor and fellow author, Jan Gordon, for the career she now finds herself immersed in. The tale goes something like this:
In January of 2009, Nicky penned a fanfiction for an old TV series, “Scarecrow and Mrs. King”, and soon became ‘hooked’ on story-telling. She joined a fan-based group for the show and through there met Jan Gordon. It was an idle comment made by Jan during a review of Black Silk (Jan’s newly published book) that inspired Nicky to write her first original story. Over the course of the next two months, she hastily scribbled down a suspense-driven romance entitled Forever In Time and presented it to the world in August of 2009. Soon after, she wrote The Mating, a paranormal romance and followed it up with The Keeping and The Finding. The three stories formed a loose paranormal trilogy called The Law of the Lycans. Nicky continues to expand the Lycan series and has a long list of possible plots waiting in the wings.
Nicky has recently retired from her day job and now hopes to concentrate more of her energy on her new passion of writing.
When she writes, Nicky sees the story unfolding in her head like a movie and tries to include enough detail so that readers can ‘see’ the story just as she does. The sights, sounds, smells and sensations of a scene are almost as important to her as the actual plot.
Creating main characters that are ‘real’ is also something she strives for. Nicky tries to make each character different, to give them an interesting backstory, to make their actions and feelings logical and to hopefully make the reader actually care what happens to the people in the story.
Nicky lives in Canada and tries to stick to Canadian spelling and punctuation in her work, in support of her country. She is an avid supporter of animal shelters, nature conservancy, food banks and a variety of other charities. Currently she has two ‘inside’ cats and one official ‘outside’ cat though a number of strays seem to take up residence in her garden each year.
When not writing, Nicky enjoys reading – though she often bemoans that she seldom has time for it any more. Her favourite authors are Elizabeth Peters, S.C. Stephen and Cherise Sinclair. She also enjoys spending time out in nature, gardening, taking day trips and eating dark chocolate.
You can contact Nicky Charles at her website:
www.nickycharles.com
Jan Gordon grew up in London, England, and emigrated to Israel in her early twenties. After many years of working as a secretary in various media companies, both in the U.K. and Israel, she took time off to raise her two sons.
In 2006, after many years of reading fanfiction for an old American TV series, Scarecrow & Mrs. King, she decided to pick up her pen, or rather her keyboard, and wrote her first story, a collaboration with another fanfiction writer, Amy F. (TwoPhantoms1), and the writing partnership of The Yank and The Brit was born. Three years later Jan answered a writing challenge on a fan site for that same TV show and wrote a short original piece and posted it to the group. The characters in that story wouldn’t leave her alone and eventually she gave in and wrote their story. That story was “Black Silk”, a paranormal romance about were panthers.
Jan posted “Black Silk” on the fan site and it received such a good reception from the other members, she branched out and posted it on other sites, including Smashwords. One of the members of the fan site, another fanfiction writer, Charlie, made a comment in her review of the shifter story that sparked an idea, and in reply Jan told her she should use that concept in a story because it sounded fantastic. That ‘idea’ became “Forever In Time” by, the newly named, Nicky Charles. After Nicky’s first two books, Jan started working with her as editor and neither has looked back since.
Jan has since written “Life In The Shadows”, a paranormal romance anthology and a prequel, of sorts, to “Black Silk”. Nicky Charles collaborated with Jan on one of the stories in “Life In The Shadows” which combined her wolves and Jan’s panthers. They enjoyed the endeavour so much that they decided to repeat the experience – the result was “In The Cards”.
Jan Gordon now lives in Jerusalem, Israel, with her husband and two adult sons. She and her husband often travel to North America and the U.K. to see family and friends. Although Jan both writes and edits paranormal romance, she rarely reads that genre for pleasure. Since discovering author Georgette Heyer as a young teen, her passion for reading Regency romance has never dimmed. Apart from reading, which she does whenever time allows, her other favourite pastimes are cooking and doing Pilates.
