Nikki Loftin

This week, a friend invited me and thirteen other middle-aged chicks to her house for a night of food, fun, and Bunco. (Which, for me, is like saying, Margaritas, Mojitos, and Root Canal. I loathe Bunco. But I like this woman very much and I’d never seen her house, so…)
When I walked in the front [...]

I just finished reading Betsy Lerner’s The Forest for the Trees: An Editor’s Advice to Writers, and it spurred me to action. I decided, after reading her incredibly funny and depressing chapters about how disappointing and heartbreaking getting published can be (and here I thought the being unpublished part was sucking eggs), I had to [...]

Living where I do, I’ve always known it was a possibility a rattlesnake would take up residence in our yard. Considering our “yard” is six acres of scrub-brushy Texas hillside, it was a certainty that the critters were out there all along. But our unseasonably warm weather this week brought at least one of ‘em [...]

So, when is your book going to be published? That’s the one, right? That annoying one that unpublished writers get all the time. (Especially, as it turns out, unpublished agented writers. Who’d a thunk it?) My stock answer is both philosophical and Southern: How long is a piece of string?
But recently, someone very near and [...]

I’m not one of those writers who has to “feel the Muse” to get my work done, exactly. I’ve had to write for deadlines before, and I don’t really want anyone as Woo Woo and unpredictable as a mythological creature for my writing buddy. But lately I’ve been wishing I had a Muse, so I [...]

Happy New Year! Yes, I know I’m a little late with that, but I’m still digging out from under the tinsel… no. No. I’m not one for New Year’s Resolutions, but I resolve to stop lying on this blog in 2010. I haven’t been taking down Xmas decorations, working on the novel, writing thank-yous, or [...]