We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Nick Alimonos. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Nick below.

Nick, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Learning the craft is often a unique journey from every creative – we’d love to hear about your journey and if knowing what you know now, you would have done anything differently to speed up the learning process.

Most people these days do not treat the literary craft in the same way they would other artistic mediums. You would not expect someone to pick up a violin for the first time and learn to play beautifully after only a month of practice — at least not to the extent that someone would pay to hear their performance. You would not expect someone who has only just started painting to have their work displayed in a quality museum. Unfortunately, there is often little consideration given to the years, sometimes even decades, of practice required to master the art of storytelling. Agents and publishers do not ask you about your experience or level of education, and aspiring authors have taken note, expecting to write a bestseller within a year or less. While Amazon has made finding readers more accessible, the craft has suffered as a result.

I started my literary journey at the age of six (and tried to get published by nine) and would likely have self-published my first drafts if the option existed back in the 80s. Fortunately, I had to learn how to write the old-fashioned way, and it’s made me a far better writer. I started with pen or pencil, scribbling the incoherent ramblings produced by my adolescent mind onto the pink order tickets I stole from my father’s pizzeria. I later graduated to a typewriter and then a word processor. With each new story, I learned grammar, spelling, and basic story structure. Eventually, I earned my English degree at the University of South Florida, but my real education came from putting in the work and reading as many books as I could get my hands on.

I’m not sure what I would have done differently if I had known then what I know now. My overinflated ego and unrealistic expectations helped push me, but they also hurt me when my first book was met with a poor reception. Still, if I could go back and talk to myself about writing, I would tell myself to read more contemporary fiction. The classics are wonderful, but fiction evolves, and a good writer must adapt to the changing times.

Nick, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I am the creator of the Aenya Series, a fantasy adventure which so far includes three novels: Ages of Aenya, The Princess of Aenya, and The Feral Girl. I am currently working on my latest entry, and my first young adult book, The Magiq of Aenya. The Aenya Series is available on Amazon and through my website at nickalimonos.com.

While I love all of my books, they are my children, after all — I am most proud of ‘The Princess of Aenya’; I feel it has a lot to say about the human condition, particularly with regards to the dichotomy between love and hate, empathy and cruelty, and freedom and tyranny. When my readers tell me how my work has moved them emotionally, I know I’ve done what I was born to do.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

Honestly, I feel I went to college to learn how *not* to write. English professors are enamored by authors who have been dead for over a century. While I adore the works of Poe, Melville, Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Homer, emulating their antiquated style can be detrimental to anyone pursuing a career in writing. It’s really no different than studying to become a doctor and only reading from Gray’s Anatomy. While I agree that teaching the classics will always have its place (some stories are universal and supersede time and place), colleges need to invest more in what people want to read today, because that is what, as an author, I am having to learn to do on my own. Case in point, my first book, The Dark Age of Enya, was heavily inspired by Robert E. Howard and H.P. Lovecraft, but it was largely dismissed in favor of more fleshed-out and descriptive writing, such as A Game of Thrones. I was compelled to adapt my style to meet the expectations of modern fantasy readers, and Ages of Aenya was the result.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

In 2005, after my first book review received a moderate rating (5 out of 10 stars), I was devastated beyond description. It never occurred to me to quit writing; of course, I had been doing it my entire life, but I was forced to drastically rethink my career.

Turns out, I wasn’t the genius I had always assumed I was, and competing on a national stage was a far cry from being voted the best writer in my class. So after quite a bit of soul searching and a few bouts with depression, I picked up my laptop and rewrote the damn thing—every word from scratch. I spent nine years on it. But even after all that work, I realized that my next book, The Princess of Aenya, would be better, and that learning the craft is a never-ending journey.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://nickalimonos.com
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/alimonosnick/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCd50xzLytP-_fW1mA_ZsEeA
• Other: BLOG: https://writersdisease.net/

  ART GALLERY: https://www.deviantart.com/books-of-aenya

  PODCAST: https://open.spotify.com/show/7wVKn03IH3Saf2V4MMSe1b?si=29ed9a671a3c448d

  AMAZON: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BNP1DDKM

  GOODREADS: https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/6263987-nick-alimonos