AMoRaR Interview: Nicole Evans

A Month of Rain and Reads Interviews3 months ago11 min readAdd comment

Welcome to A Month of Rain and Reads, a celebration of self-published and indie SFF throughout the entire month of November. To find out how you can take part and view the whole list of content, visit our introduction post.

Today, we have an interview with author, editor, and gaming enthusiast Nicole Evans

Our theme for November is A Month of Rain & Reads. Do you subscribe to the idea of curling up with a good book while the rain pours down outside? What book would you read? Would you bring tea and a blanket? What would make the moment perfect?

Dovah wants to know more about those warm chocolate chip cookies.

Oh my gosh yes, I absolutely subscribe to this! I absolutely love when the weather is gloomy and stormy, the skies are gray and overcast, it’s a crisp fall temp outside and the windows are open. In this dream scenario, I have a roaring fireplace and all I can see are trees outside. Always makes me want to have a batch of warm chocolate chip cookies, an oversized blanket, a lit candle and a good book to read.

What else do you want our readers to know about you?

Hmm…what a good question! I’m unabashedly queer. I have a weird obsession with sharp cheddar cheese. I have a full LOTR sleeve and my next sleeve is a mash-up of Horizon Zero Dawn, Mass Effect, Dragon Age and Baldur’s Gate III (with an entire half leg sleeve planned for Clair Obscur). (Buying my books or booking me to edit yours helps me pay for these tattoos, woohoo!) I’m super anxious all the bloody time and I suck at social media and marketing. But I’m just a huge nerd with a brain that won’t quiet who is approachable, albeit awkward. I promise!

In your author bio, it says you’ve written eight novels, but Blood Price (2024) is your debut, and it’s the only one listed for you on Goodreads and Amazon. It sounds like it’s been a long journey to getting that first book published. Can you tell us a little about that?

Of course! My publication journey is the exact opposite of overnight success. I started writing in grade school (short stories) but had my first completed novel (YA fantasy) done by ninth grade, finishing that trilogy by mid-college. I started querying that first book when I was 14 and ended up trunking the entire trilogy (thank goodness, it was awful).

Then I wrote an adult portal fantasy plus sequel that I queried and shelved, then an adult sci-fi that I trunked, with a few other books sprinkled in that I don’t remember enough about to honestly make note here, if I’m honest.

But I started writing Blood Price in 2014/2015 and it’s the story—despite querying for three years and getting the full range of rejections—I just couldn’t bring myself to shelve. I just couldn’t.

I had a few friends (R.K. Brainerd, Jagged Emerald City, and Ladz, A Fealty of Monsters) who’d been in the trenches with me but who had self-published recently at the time I was considering Blood Price’s future (so, late 2023, early 2024). It took a while, but I finally accepted that Blood Price was too unmarketable for trad. So, I worked on draft thirteen, rewriting it to fit my vision instead of the R&R agent rewrites attempting to fit it into trad’s mold, and now it’s been out a year!

What is your favourite thing about being an indie author?

The community. There is toxicity in every community, especially large scale ones, of course. But I’m just so grateful to all the other authors who I admire, the reviewers who give my book the time of day, readers who supported me despite me being a debut author, booksellers who made my dreams come true, editors who believed in me, my amazing cover artist, Zoe Badini, for giving me the cover of my dreams; the list goes on and on and on. I find something new to love about being indie and being in community with indie authors every day. And though I’ve read indie books for a while, it’s an entirely new experience being an author within the space.

I cherish it utterly.

Your bio also gives the impression that you tell a large variety of stories. What can readers expect to find in your book?

Yeah, if you’re looking for an author who sticks to one genre/type of story, I don’t think I’m the author for you, sad to say! I’m a very tropey writer. I love me a good set of tropes and exploring them with my own worlds and stories and characters. I don’t like to be restrained to only one genre (or subgenre) just because my debut was epic fantasy. Right now, I’m working in two main genres (epic fantasy and fantasy romance), but I have ideas for tragedies, sci-fi space operas, historicals, horror-esque stories, too. Just gotta find the time to write them all!

However, despite planning to have a career that spans genres, I do have some consistent themes and elements that have showed up in most of my works so far (including all the ones no one will ever get to see). Things like: dark, cursed forests, queernorm worlds, animal companions, subverting classic fantasy or romance tropes, themes and exploration of trauma (particularly guilt), to name a few!

What themes are important to you, and how are they reflected in your writing?

Writing is a very therapeutic avenue for me. Often, I write stories because I’m trying to process something in my life and I can’t find another avenue that suits.

For Blood Price, it stemmed from over a decade as period gaslighting that I struggled to accept/comprehend, my choice to forgo motherhood, and in conversation with the robbing of women and queer rights that occurred (and are occurring still) in the time it took to write and edit that book (2014-2024).

In the sequel concluding Ashilde’s story, it heavily explores PTSD, which is in relation to exploring my own PTSD that stems from the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

In my forthcoming debut fantasy romance, it explores guilt that comes from being unfair to yourself and holding yourself to impossible standards, alongside exploring positive fat rep and love (thanks therapy for forcing me to tackle that one).

When you read one of my books, you’re seeing reflected somewhere—either in a character, a plot, a theme, a setting, etc.—something I’ve dealt with/actively dealing with. That’s why Blood Price was so hard to write. It’s both traumatic and catharsis all in one.

How is it balancing full-time editorial work with authorial work?

HARD. I dove into freelance editing full-time this Jan/Feb after doing it part-time for six and a half years and I am so beyond grateful that it’s worked out so far. I’ve gotten to work with so many talented writers and so many amazing stories (especially queer stories!!) and it’s been amazing for my mental health and navigating life as a disabled individual that was becoming more and more difficult in academia (my career previously).

But I underestimated how difficult it would be to balance my authors’ works with my authorial work. This year, their work has always taken priority, which has caused some long stretches where I’m not writing at all. I’d like to get better at balancing that next year (especially as I don’t want taking-a-decade-to-write-and-edit-a-novel to be my norm publishing schedule lol).

What are you working on next? Can you tease us?

Sure thing! My Patreon subscribers always get the first info on everything, but I can say that I’m taking a break from Ashilde’s story (don’t worry, the end of that duology is still coming; it’s just very heavy to write and I needed an escapist ((for me)) story first!) to write something very different in tone (read: flirty, horny, hilarious, slightly absurdist DnD questing vibes) but still as deep in trauma: my debut fantasy romance! I’m hoping to finish it in the next two months (first draft wise) and then, well…

We’ll see what 2026 brings, shall we? 😉

And a few quick questions. What’s your favourite…

…book, in recent times?

Gods, this is so hard to choose! I loved Dan Hanks’ The Way Up is Death. I am about to read Sarah Gailey’s Spread Me and almost finished with Tlotlo Tsamaase’s Womb City, which is fantastic—oh, but so is Escape Velocity by Victor Manibo!

Also very excited to read August Clarke’s Metal From Heaven, Ehigbor Okosun’s Forged by Blood, The Poet Empress by Shen Tao, The Beast You Made of Me by Bethany Baptiste, Our Vicious Oaths by N.E. Davenport, Name Her Holy by Aubrey Ennis and Of Blood and Stone by A.J. Braun!

(Sorry.)

…game, in recent times?

*shouts from the rooftops*

CLAIR OBSCUR: EXPEDITION 33!!

It is a personal mission of mine to get every single person to play this game (I’ve gotten six people to, so I’d say I’m off to a good start!). It’s rewired my brain and who I am as a storyteller. It is a MUST.

…writing advice?

“Writing advice is bullshit, but bullshit fertilizes.” — Chuck Wendig

…advice for someone who wants to publish their own book?

We’re living in a cursed timeline. As I posted on socials the other day: “We truly are (and SHOULD BE) in our, “fuck it” era, fellow writers. In this timeline??? Write your unhinged, your whimsy, your anger, your grotesque, your revolutions, your comfort, your “this could never sell” stories.

They can. And they WILL.”

…source of inspiration?

Honestly? My dog. She makes me (truly makes me, her guilt-activation is top-notch) take daily walks and those walks are a life saver in terms of not just keeping me healthy, but also getting me out into nature, which is my favorite place to be. More than one plot hole has been solved by one of our Dovah-pulling-me-along sessions (more commonly known as “walks”).

…way to clear your mind when everything gets a bit much?

Walks! (see above.)

Do you have any last words? Any shoutouts to authors who have supported you or whose books have inspired you?

I’d really love to take a moment to shout out my authors (i.e., those who let me edit their books) who have books out (or soon to be out), as they are almost all in the indie space, too. It’s so hard to get books noticed and they are all incredible writers. I’d love to get more reader’s eyes on their books.

J.D. Rivers (The Edge of the World; The Wish of a Dragon)
Rachael Bell-Irving (Wicked Conjuring series)
Minyue Fu (Stratagem of Fated Winds)
E.K. Earle (Wraiths and Wanderings series)
Oleander Craw (The Wards Will Fall)
Tim Whitecastle (Queens of the Wyrd)
Veo Corva (Tombtown series; The Old Goat and the Alien)
Ash Armstrong (Grimluk Demon Hunter series)
Marie Voinson (Us Against the Likes)
E.A. Bard (A Tempest of Ravens)
Bricker P. Vale (The Winding Way)
Vanessa Fowler (A Tale of Two Sparrows)
Sean Van Damme (A Treachery of Shadows, out 2026)
Wren Rivers (Floodwaters, Blood of the Gods, out 2026)
Christina Juhlin (Sunderroot, out 2026)

Nicole Evans

Nicole Evans (she/hers) is a queer, disabled SFF writer. With an MFA in Fiction, more trunked novels than she can count and too many ideas to keep track of, she made her authorial debut with Blood Price. She currently lives in the Midwest with her partner and their pets, though she yearns to escape to the forest one day. You can find her online via her LinkTree.