Nikki Loftin

Okay, I know. Two posts in one day? Excessive.
But I had two pieces of good news today! First, I sold another puppet play to another anthology, this time to a holiday-themed book. It will be out in early 2010. Great, right? But then….
I had a short story accepted by Boy’s Life magazine! This is a [...]

What a day! No details, but it was NO FUN until… I got home, walked right past all the dirty dishes and the enormous mounds of laundry, pulled two of my own gigantic homemade chocolate chip cookies out of the freezer, read an email from a sweet editor letting me know that another one of [...]

Ten years ago today, I ended the longest day of my life — 23 grueling hours of unmedicated back labor — with a plea for an epidural (which made both my mother and husband burst into tears of gratitude for ending my own suffering and theirs) and a few hours later, the birth of my [...]

I’ve been thinking a lot about the role of religion in genre fiction, and more specifically its role in the fiction I write.
I spent most of the last ten years working in churches. I went in a 3/4 time Christian (don’t ask), and came out a 100% God lover who drags her kids to church [...]

Howdy, writer peeps!
Okay, for all of you who are wondering “just what kind of query gets you a free scholarship to a NYC conference?” — here ya go.
FYI, I broke two of the cardinal rules for queries on this one: I was the only one to see it before I sent it (um, I wrote [...]

Hi, y’all!
Well, I was going to post about how I finally gained literary legitimacy when a poem I wrote was accepted for a literary journal this week. (Ah, yes! Finally a win I can tell my old grad school writing buddies about. Ha!) And that did happen, sure, and I’ll blog about it later, ’cause [...]

Today’s blog post is for my unpublished writer friends. For the ones who don’t have husbands who give them rejection roses, for the ones who wonder why it’s so hard to answer the question “So, what do you do?” at a cocktail party with the truest answer.
Click here.
Keep writing!

Okay, I know this might be no big deal to you famous author-types out there, but I’m not quite famous yet. So it was a special little thrill to be surfing through my bookmarked sites last night and to stumble upon this. Isn’t that sweet? I thought so, too.
I had lots of writer-friends being very [...]

Well, hello intrepid blog readers! I haven’t posted anything but good news recently (a welcome change from the usual diet of whining, moping, and cursing the agents/editors/children who don’t appreciate me adequately, n’est-ce pas?) — so why stop now?
I am happy (more like peeing-my-panties ecstatic) to announce that my essay, Coming Out of the Craft [...]

Okay, I’ll admit it. I like Miley Cyrus. Well, one of her songs anyway. You know the schmaltzy one, It’s The Climb? Yeah, I know. If I belonged to Mensa, they would yank my membership. I’m a little afraid my more sophisticated friends (all two of them) might judge me harshly. But my writer buddies? [...]