Hello Dear Subscribers! I hope this (out-of-kilter) world is treating you well. I’m on track to meet my writing goals as set out in my January resolutions and I do declare that once my current project is complete (by the end of March), I WILL take a small (very small) respite from all the hard work.
I’m currently rewriting The Bag Lady of Borrowed Luck and on a good note, I absolutely love this book. It’s kind of odd (and I hope it’s not egotistical), an author liking (and being surprised and amused by and intrigued by) their own book but I wrote it in 2022, honed it in 2023 and am now revisiting it with serious intent.
But wow, rewriting is so vampiric. Books suck the life out of one. Well, they suck the life of out me. I concentrate so hard, and it feels so intense and so relentless. Novels are Everests, there’s no doubt. And it’s Lent so there’s no chocolate or baked goods to fuel me and silly as that sounds, it makes it harder.
I wanted to share an interview just out today. I generally only share reviews but the only book I’ve been reading is The Unnamable by Samuel Beckett, because mostly, I’ve been writing.
I hope you’ll enjoy this interview and hey, we’re heading for Spring! We’ll march through March and watch the tulips start to bloom - I can’t wait.
Thanks to Michael Parkes Author for interviewing me and readers, I really hope you’ll enjoy some of the hitherto unrevealed facts behind my writing life. All comments most welcome.
1. Introduce yourself; who are you and what types of books do you write?
I’m Lisa de Nikolits and I write in multiple genres, just to prove to myself that I can. When I was eight years old and staring out the back window of a classic silver 1959 Porsche (the family car at the time), I was convinced I was the reincarnation of Emily Brontë and that my career as a writer was assured.
Back in the day, in South Africa, categories were far simpler: fiction, non-fiction, short stories and poetry. Fiction was divided into literary fiction versus romance (which I took a stab at writing when I was fourteen) but it didn’t go much further than that.
When I came to Canada in 2000, I was baffled by the encyclopaedical breakdown of genres, subgenres and the details of cross-genres and genre-hopping. As the years have gone by, classifications have increased and I’ve written noir, literary fiction, speculative fiction, mysteries, sci-fi, suspense crime, domestic thrillers and magical realism. All I’ve ever hoped for is that someone would say “she wrote a damn good book” and perhaps that could be my gravestone epitaph instead of “so long and thanks for all the fish.”
I’m not interested in writing cosies or horror although I shouldn’t say that because if I do, it might become the next Everest I decide I need to climb.
In terms of a proper bio: Born in South Africa, Lisa de Nikolits has lived in Canada since 2000. She has a Bachelor of Arts in English Literature and Philosophy and has lived in the U.S.A., Australia and Britain. She is the award-winning author of twelve published novels. Her work has garnered five-star reviews and an enthusiastic fanbase. She has appeared on many recommended reading lists, including Chatelaine, Canadian Living, Hello! Canada, the Quill & Quire, the CBC and the Toronto Star. The Occult Persuasion and The Anarchist’s Solution was longlisted for a Sunburst Award for Excellence in Canadian Literature of The Fantastic and The Rage Room was a finalist in the International Book Awards. Her short fiction and poetry have been published in various international anthologies and journals including the Crime Writers of Canada’s 40th Anniversary anthology. No Fury Like That was published in Italian in 2019 by Edizione Le Assassine under the title Una furia dell’altro mondo. Other recent works include: The 13th Letter, A Mesdames of Mayhem anthology, Imagine and Navigate, Windtree Press anthology, 2024/5, Devouring Tomorrow Dundurn/Rare Machines anthology, May 2025. That Time I Killed You is scheduled for release in May 2026, Level Best Books.
2. What are your books about?
There are so many things I feel the world doesn’t notice or perhaps doesn’t care enough about; people whose lives are precarious and challenged. I want to draw people’s attention to those things in a way that creates an entertaining, original and enjoyable read. Which means there’s a huge database constantly swirling around in my brain, with each tiny piece vying for the opportunity to be a lead actor in a play, or even be a bit part player in a music video.
I love watching documentaries of people pushing themselves to the limits and after an absence of thirty-four years, I went back to karate and got my black belt. As we speak, I’m training for the next level and I’m hoping like crazy that I don’t get injured along the way or that life doesn’t interrupt my plans. Because karate, like book writing, is a luxury I never take for granted. People are fighting for their lives, fighting for their countries, fighting to survive, so I have a responsibility to write something meaningful, or at the very least, offer a great escape from the chores of the world. And, like karate, writing books takes discipline, blood, sweat and tears.
3. What was the inspiration behind writing your first book?
Do you remember dating in the 80’s? It was a rather drunken and anarchical affair, conducted in person, with telephone numbers exchanged on scrappy slips of paper in wildly crowded bars or garden parties. Often, one only had the vaguest of memories of who you’d actually agreed to go on a date with, resulting in more than a few surprises in store when the bloke showed up at the door. Many a time I truly thought I’d been aiming for the fellow behind the guy’s right shoulder and not this oddball character, but never mind, on the date I went.
It may sound very iffy and horribly in need of a #metoo audit but it was a lot of fun. And it was all for a good cause. It was for my first book, Single Girls Go Mad Sooner, and it wasn’t the last time I embarked upon an escapade simply so I could write about it later.
Working with an illustrator friend, the goal was for me to go on a hundred dates in one year, and my friend was to provide the accompanying artwork, so in a way, we planned a graphic novel of sorts.
I threw myself to the assignment with full dedication, squaring up my shoulder pads and arming my Marge Simpson 80’s bouffant with enough hair spray to kill an ecosystem and going on the strangest dates I could, for the cause.
Now, to contextualize things a bit more, if you were a middle-class white South African female in the 80’s and were unmarried at twenty-two, you were “on the shelf”. I was close to twenty-five, which was extremely alarming for my mother who worried that I’d end up alone, sad and mad. For his part, my father opined that women were dynamite kegs of hormones and pre-menstrual tension and one had to tread very very carefully around such volatile creatures. He said that all women were mad to a degree; it wasn’t our fault, we were simply at the mercy of our chemical imbalances.
I retorted that if all women were mad, then single girls go mad sooner, because we had to date the unfathomable and frustrating creatures who showed up at the local watering holes. And thus, the idea for my very first book, Single Girls Go Mad Sooner, was born.
It was a horrible thing, that book. It was so badly written that I have one remaining taped-up copy. And in case you’re wondering who’d publish such an awful thing, I was duped by a UK publisher pretending to be THE Minerva Press but who were, in reality, shoddy charlatans. There I was, desperately wanting to have a book of my own in the world, bowled over at having been “chosen” by Minerva and while my total contribution to the project was around 200 pounds, I was quite devastated that the result was nothing more than a vanity publication. I have subsequently tried to rewrite it and I very quickly stopped, concerned that the terrible writing would infect me like a virus that I’d never shake off. So I taped the book up and that was that.
But those were fun days and I wrote all the time, not only for Single Girls, but short stories, poetry, other awful long novels; God’s Day Off, Trapped White Space (a beautiful typographical term), The Fables of Foxtrot Four and Princess Isis and the Fat Ghosts.
Thinking of those days harkens back to rushing back to the office at midnight after a media office party (in a bar of course) to “borrow” an IBM Golf Ball Selectric typewriter to write a short story that was bursting out of my head. It was quite routine for bosses to insist that a couple of rounds of shots at lunch were an excellent team building exercise (nowadays it’s more about finger painting or ten pin bowling), and these lunches were often followed by more drinks after work.
It was an era of indiscretion and I felt quite jaunty taking the elevator up to the 8th floor to grab the typewriter and lug it home. I felt like I was going the extra mile towards being a real writer. Several weeks later, my boss made me return the typewriter, even although I explained that he was hampering my future writing career.
I’m also reminded of printing off dozens of manuscripts at dawn and late at night on the office printer, using reams of corporate paper and scuttling around and thieving envelopes, brown paper and tape and then hauling my doorstop-sized manuscripts to the post office and wishing them well as they thunked off into world.
None of those books met with success, then I moved to Australia and then I came to Canada in 2000 and found my real writing home.
4. What did you learn while writing your second book?
Because I write at least two, perhaps three novels at a time, as well as short stories, it’s hard to characterize which of my books really is my second. I’ve learned that whatever my substantive editors ask of me, I can deliver and I’m not paralyzed with fear at the thought of ripping a novel apart at the seams and sewing it together in a completely different way. I’ve learned to trust myself, trust my imagination, trust my passion and know that I’ll do whatever hard work is needed to get the book to the best possible place it can be.
5. What is the most rewarding part of being an author?
Writing makes me incredibly happy. There’s that most precious time when it’s just you and the book and the whole thing is flowing like nectar from the gods and nothing else exists and it’s the ultimate high. I live for those moments of struggling with a plot point and then making an almost miraculous breakthrough and I feel like I’m surfing a hundred-foot wave, with rainbows behind me and dolphins at my side.
6. What elements do you think make for a good story?
Coming up with something original. And I believe that with Mad Dog and the Sea Dragon, I’ve done that: Mad Dog and the Sea Dragon is a really fun, one-of-a-kind noir novel. Christopher Moore comes to mind, or maybe Carl Hiaasen, with a dash of Quentin Tarantino, all bundled up in a noir 50’s styled gangster novel set in modern day times, with a fabulous protagonist who dresses like a Hollywood star, but she’s razor sharp. She also likes to hang out with Daisy, her leafy sea dragon pal, while she waits for Enzo Esposito to show up and take her out on the town. Enzo’s a big fan of Weegee, the true crime photographer of the 1940’s and what Jessica (the protagonist) finds out, will shock her and she’ll need to engage all her wits about her to get out alive.
“In her new book MAD DOG AND THE SEA DRAGON, Lisa de Nikolits lends her literary talents to noir, bringing wise guy mobsters to the new millennium. She brings wise guy mobsters to the new millennium. She’s mastered spec-fic, thrillers, sci-fi, drama, and more; and now, with MAD DOG AND THE SEA DRAGON, Lisa de Nikolits turns to noir!” – AllLitUp.ca
7. What is your current writing project?
That Time I Killed You (a domestic suspense thriller) will be published by Level Best this year. I’m part of a wonderful collective, The Mesdames of Mayhem, and we’ve got a new anthology coming out this year, The Power of 13. I loved my short story submission so much (The 13th Bird) that I’m working on an expansion novel, The 7th Clone Down the Line. It’s speculative fiction, which is being a superb amount of fun. And I’m hoping to be part of a couple of other anthologies but I don’t know yet and I don’t want to jinx them!
8. Where can readers discover more about you and your books?
Author website: https://lisawriter.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lisa.denikolits
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ireadsomewherethatbylisa/
Amazon.ca: https://tinyurl.com/5bckbbpp
Inanna Publications: https://inanna.ca/product/mad-dog-and-the-sea-dragon/
Wikipedia Page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisa_de_Nikolits
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