Nicki Markus (part 2)

ID 0:02

This is a Vision Australia radio podcast.

Kate Cooper 0:18

On Vision Australia Radio, welcome to our conversations on the work and experiences of emerging writers. I'm Kate Cooper, and our guest today is Nicky Marcus, who writes fiction under the names Nicky J Marcus and Asta Idonea, and is also a book reviewer and former freelance editor who has worked in publishing and communicates in several languages. Nicki, welcome to the program. 

We spoke last week about the differences in your writing style under each of your pen names, what inspired you to become a writer, the day to day practicalities of your creative work and how your professional experiences as a freelance editor have influenced your writing and the editing of your own work. I'm delighted to continue our conversation this week. As well as being a freelance editor, you've had professional experience in publishing. How has that helped you with decisions that you make about publishing your own work. 

Nicki Markus 1:22

Most of my experience in publishing has come from working with small presses as an editor. And the thing with small presses is there's always the risk of them closing, which I've had happen to me, both in my editing side of things and as a writer as well, where I've published stories with a small press who's then, unfortunately not managed to make it work financially, and has had to close. But certainly it gives you an insight into all the aspects that you need to get a book published. So when I first started, you understand the process of going through the cover design, the editing stages, and also some of those background legal side of things like your ISBN and things like that. 

So I've done a mix. I've had mostly works published through small presses, but I have also self published a handful of times. And I think there's pros and cons both ways, and it depends on your outlook and and what's going to work for you. I think you know the advantage of self publishing is you've got complete creative freedom, but at the same time, no one's there to help you, so there's a lot of personal work, and also potentially a lot of cost involved if you need to hire an editor and a cover designer, if you can't do well, you could perhaps do the cover design yourself, if you're gifted in that sort of software, but you do need an editor, at least a proof reader, and who's going to format the book for epub and for print and things like that, as well as all the legal considerations like your ISBN and getting your library listing and things like that. 

So those are the sort of disadvantages as well. To that side, in terms of small presses, obviously, you lose a little bit of that freedom, because within limits, you have to go along with what they want. And the advantage, though, is that obviously, a lot of that's all organized for you. You don't have to worry about your editing, your cover design, you know the press is going to deal with it. Both though these days require a lot of personal marketing, but at least with the small press, they're doing a little bit to help you out as well.

Kate Cooper 3:24

And you said in last week's conversation about the challenges that having to do your own marketing particularly do bring you. Yes,

Nicki Markus 3:33

Yes, it's... one of those things that social media these days. It's all about interaction, really, like everyone can just make a post about their book and put it out there, but if no one looks at it, that's it. And it's all about building those connections. And that's all about time you obviously you need a bit of know how on the design front to make your post look good, but it's all about building those connections with the readers and with other content creators on social media to be able to exchange posts with each other, and that's just very, very time consuming if you're working a full time job and things like that as well, sure.

Kate Cooper 4:09

And also the different genres in which you write as well, being aware of what's out there in fantasy, for example, which is one of your favorite genres.

Nicki Markus 4:20

Yes, yes, that's right. And in some ways, being diverse as a writer doesn't help you, because it's much easier to market to a niche than it is to if everyone knows I write Regency romance and that's your thing, and it's much easier to really focus your marketing in one area than for me, where I've had to say, well, this book's fantasy, but my next one's a contemporary romance, and that's a very, sometimes a very different audience.

Kate Cooper 4:45

That's fascinating, because I would have thought the more diverse, the more audiences you reach. I wouldn't have thought of the flip side of that. I wanted to ask you, going back to your comments about the cover design, yours are very. Striking. Do you work with different cover designers, or do you have someone you've built up a collaborative relationship with? 

Nicki Markus 5:07

For the ones I've self published, I actually did my own covers for all but one, and I'm not an expert, so they're they're pretty rough and ready looking. And that last one, I had help from a friend of mine, who's a fellow author, and she was really getting heavily into self publishing at that point, and was doing cover design as a side geek to get a bit of money in doing covers for other authors while she was writing her own work. And in terms of the other books, when we do cover design with the small presses, generally, they've sent me some sort of form where I've had to tell the cover designer a bit about the book, so not just the basic story, but what I think their characters look like, a sort of, if there's a vibe or a sort of feeling that I think would work, and then after that, you don't get a lot of say. 

So once or twice, I've been given a couple of options to pick between, but generally, they'll just come back to you and say, this is the cover, and I've been very lucky that I've had some very good covers. So that's been good.

Kate Cooper 6:04

Nicki, last week, you read us an extract from a work under your pen name Nicky J Markus, and another one under the name Asta Idonea. Would you read another extract for us? And I think you've got one under the name Asta Idonea. 

Nicki Markus 6:20

That's right. So this extract comes from Blood is Forever, which, if I had to describe this book, it's a gay romance, paranormal murder mystery. It's actually, it's been one of my most popular books, and it's the one I spent the most time plotting, as I mentioned last week. So the basic premise of the story is our hero goes to crime scenes and does supernatural blood testing, and he's just arrived at a crime scene. As this extract starts, the victim lay upon the bed... 

Another woman, Holden noted, and the scene was no more dire than the last so there was nothing to account for the strange reactions in the other room. That was all he observed of the murder, though, as the living figure standing at the foot of the bed, called his attention. The man was gazing intently at the corpse one hand tightly fastened on the wrought iron bed frame. He was tall and imposing, and it wasn't only His proud, upright bearing that contributed to this impression. Even with only a back view, Holden could tell the fellow's suit had not come off a rack. It encased him in sleek lyings, accentuating his fine figure in a way that screamed unadulterated style and sophistication. 

Rowl always looked good, but with him, it was pure artifice, a clear intention to dress to impress. This guy's style appeared effortless. His hair was trimmed short in a classy, timeless style, and as he turned cold and caught sight of well defined cheekbones, there were more important things on which Holden ought to be concentrating, a dead woman, a murder investigation, keeping his job, yet he was desperate to see if this stranger was as gorgeous from the front as he was from the back. His desire coupled with shock. 

A moment later, however, when the man faced him for now, Holden recognized him, and he understood the reason for the strange mood he'd sensed among the others, Valerius Blackwood was the last person Holden would have expected to see in the midst of a murder investigation. Holden knew him as Would everyone in both the supernatural and human communities in London and beyond. Nevertheless, that acquaintance came only from newsreels and gossip columns, since he and Blackwood moved in very different circles, Holden as a half and barely clung to the bottom rung of the social ladder. 

Blackwood, as head of the Mayfield beltgravir Witches London's most powerful and influential Coven, was on top in more ways than one, although currently he held no official position within the fellowships up at echelons. Rumor had it that the council often sought his guidance. The Blackwoods were one of the city's oldest witch families, a pure bloodline. Not only that, they stood out in human affairs like his father before him, Blackwood was a well known entrepreneur and philanthropist. He was in the papers every week, making donations here and cutting ribbons there. In both worlds, he was practically royalty. 

It took power, wealth, beauty or breeding to open doors in this life - and Valerius Blackwood possessed all four in abundance.

Kate Cooper 9:04

Thank you, Nicki. For the past 12 years, you've also been a professional reader and a prolific book reviewer. I have another question with several parts, how did you first get into book reviewing? How do you get the books to review, and where are your reviews published?

Nicki Markus 9:23

So I think book reviewing, I started a website in my teens. My uncle was in it, so he sort of helped me set up a very basic HTML website and taught me how to run it. And I started talking about books a little bit then, but in terms of getting review copies, it was probably around 2011 ish when I first received a book as an arc so an advanced reader copy from a publisher which I won in a sort of giveaway. And from there, I got my name on a couple of lists with different publishers who are in Australia, who would send me out books to review, and I'd get the book in exchange. 

So from there, I moved on to Net Galley, because in recent years, the publishers are obviously looking for ways to save money, so they're not sending out quite as many physical arcs anymore, and they're doing it all through places like Edelweiss and NetGalley. They're sort of websites where the publishers can list their books, and then a device is more for librarians and booksellers, whereas netgali is aimed at readers, and if you create a profile on there as a book blogger, you can request books. If you see one there that interests you, you're not guaranteed to get it, but you put in your requests and you receive a few if you're granted permission from the publisher, and usually you have 60 days to read the e book before it expires, and in exchange, you put up a review for them on one of your online platforms. 

So in terms of my online platforms, I have my blog still, which has moved away from a handmade website these days, it's a lot of work and has become a Blogger blog, and I also post on Goodreads. As I mentioned earlier, I did on the last broadcast. I do the Goodreads reading challenge every year, so all my reviews go on there, and I also have Instagram as well, where I like to share the reviews too.

Kate Cooper 11:11

And you mentioned in our conversation last week that you've hit your target with your Goodreads reviews for this year. That's right, yes, do you set your own target? I think you said 180 reviews that you've done? 

Nicki Markus 11:25

Yes, that's right, you set your own target at the start of each year. I actually started mine as 160 this year because I expected to have less time to read. But when I saw I was going to hit it, I bumped it up to 180 because you can amend it during the year. But I've already hit that as well, so I'll be in over 100% this year. So that'll be good.

Kate Cooper 11:42

That is a spectacular amount of reading. How do you manage it? 

Nicki Markus 11:47

I do read every night, probably sort of an hour and a half, roughly. That's my last thing before I go to sleep, is to get into bed with a book. And I'm a fast reader. I've always been a very fast reader.

Kate Cooper 11:59

You'd have to be to to read 180 books, and it's not yet the end of the year, you mentioned your website, Nicky J markus.com and that initially you had help from an uncle when you were young. How do you manage your website? 

Nicki Markus 12:16

Now it's a lot easier since I moved to Blogger, as opposed to creating a HTML website, which was obviously a lot more work, she had to code it all. So now it's nice and easy. You can just go in and add a post or update one of the static pages. So I tend to have my reviews on there. So every I just posted two reviews this morning, and I just tend to do that mid a batch mid week and a batch at the weekend, depending on what I finished reading. And other than that, I have static pages for my books that are currently available, which I just maintain you don't have to do too much. And I've recently added pages on my language learning, which I know we're going to talk about a bit later.

Kate Cooper 13:02

And on Vision Australia radio, you're listening to our conversation program, Emerging Writers. Our guest today is Nicki Marcus, who writes fiction under the names Nikki J Marcus and Asta Idonea. So Nicki, we mentioned in the introduction that you communicate in several languages. You have pen pals around the world, and that's how you first came to Adelaide to visit a pen pal, and then by she, good fortune, happened to get on a bus and meet the man who became your husband. You also enjoy the experience of learning a new language. Would you tell us first about which languages you've studied over the years, and then about the ones that you're focusing on at the moment. 

Nicki Markus 13:48

So my language studies started quite late, which is usual for England education, where we don't prioritise foreign languages very much, until you get into high school. So it was first year of high school when I started German, and I went to a grammar school, and there was a good focus on languages there. So in the second year, I also did French. So I was doing French and German concurrently through to GCSE, which are the exams we take at age 16, for listeners who don't know. And then we go on to do a levels for the last two years before University. 

And I had a choice at that point of whether I wanted to continue both French and German, or if I wanted to take up the opportunity to do a one year intensive GCSE in Italian. So after some thinking, I decided to do the Italian. So I dropped the German, kept French, and took the Italian, and then I went on at university to do English with French as my degree for my undergraduate. After that, I fell into learning other languages just from personal interest. 

So I had a pen pal in Prague who I went to visit, and like me, she loved musicals. So we went to see several shows, and I really fell in love with the sound of the language from those musicals. So I came back home, bought myself. A teacher, self check book, and off I went. And I had the pen pal, obviously, at the time, so I was able to read and write, and we kind of did a bit half half of our letters like I did what I could manage and check and wrote the more complicated bits in English, and she wrote a little bit back to me. It wasn't long after that, I developed an interest in Danish cinema, mainly because of Mads Mikkelsen, who played Hannibal in the TV series, and went back and started watching all his older films, which obviously mostly were in Danish. So I was like, why not learn some Danish too? 

So off I went, back to the teachers of Danish books and did a bit of Danish. And I became interested in this point as well, in sort of Norse mythology, and was reading some of the old Icelandic sagas. I was like, why don't learn Icelandic? That's how my brain works. That's one has proved the hardest, I will say, because there's not as many resources. If you're learning a big popular language like French and German. There's obviously a huge number of textbooks and a lot of options out there, but Icelandic, I struggled a bit with just finding the resources to work with, and had a pen pal at the time and able to write to them a little bit. 

But since I've lost that pen pal, she's started a family and doesn't have time to write anymore, I have kind of become a very, very rusty and I can only understand a bit and can't write anymore.

Kate Cooper 16:18

And I was just thinking as you were speaking, that when you first started building pen pal relationships, it would have been pen to paper. Do you tend to email more, or do you still get a pen and some nice paper and write by hand? 

Nicki Markus 16:34

I'm addicted to nice paper. I have to say, if I nip into [?Daiso] and see they've got a new little write, pretty cute writing set, I have to buy it. I've got so much at the moment, though, I can't afford to buy anymore. There's no space for it. So I am still very much a pen and paper writer. I mean, in my peak in my teens, I had close to 50 pen pals, and that has dropped off to, I'd say, 15 to 20 now, if I include a couple that have moved to email, and that's partly because people have got to the age where they started families, they don't have time to write. And also, the postage costs don't go down. They keep going up. When I first came to Australia, I think it cost me $1.65 to post a letter to Europe, and now it's $3.90 so that's obviously has an effect as well, but for most of them, I do still like to write by hand.

Kate Cooper 17:23

I've got some more questions for you about language learning, but I'm just curious to know how have your interactions with your pen pals influenced your writing or thinking about characterisations.

Nicki Markus 17:40

I think it definitely gives you sort of food for thought. I mean, a lot of my stories, I've tended to set in England, a few in Australia. But I think you get to meet a wide range of people, a lot of different personalities, and the more you study different languages, the more you come to appreciate different cultural aspects as well. Like, obviously, I was very much in the European languages back while I was in Europe, in the UK, and the ones I'm studying now, which I miss telling you about, was that I've moved more into Asian languages lately, because I've been exposed to Asian culture a lot more here than I was in the UK. 

To memory, I don't recall ever seeing like a Japanese anime on TV in the UK, but when I came here, they were played. And so I sort of got into watching a bit of anime, reading a bit of manga, and then decided, well, I've never done a language like Japanese, let's give it a try. Started that, and then, because of COVID, I got into Korean drama on Netflix. And was like, No, I mustn't learn Korean. I've got too many other languages to concentrate on. And that lasted two months, and I was buying the teachers of Korean books. And I have a sister in law now from China, and several people have been saying to me, why are you learning Korean and Japanese when you've got a Chinese sister in law? 

So somehow Chinese, um, also came on the list because her family are moving out from China to come here to with her, but they don't speak English yet, so just to try and help in the communication, I also started learning some Chinese. 

Kate Cooper 19:08

So Nicki, this passion for languages has taken you not only to learn language, but you've recently been in Seoul, the capital of South Korea, where you experience the musical theater culture there. And as we mentioned in last week's program, you're passionate about musical theater, and that was something you shared with your parents growing up. What was it like the musical theater culture in South Korea? 

Nicki Markus 19:35

It's in some ways very similar to London, but in some ways very different. I think one of the things I mean Seoul is an absolutely amazing city on a lot of levels, and one of the things I do love about it is the theater, because coming to Australia, there's lots of really great things about the lifestyle here, but I do miss the London West End and that awesome theater scene getting to see all the latest musicals. And Seoul has a really wonderful performing arts culture scene, and musicals have. Started to become really big, probably over the last 20 years, they've become more and more popular, and they do a mix. So they do Korean translations of the popular musicals, like Phantom of the Opera, but they also have been writing in more in recent years their own musicals. 

So the first time I went to Seoul was actually last year to 2023 and my favorite Korean musical theatre actor, [?Jon Don Sok], was doing Phantom of the Opera. And this was quite a big production, because it was the first Korean language one in about 10 years. They'd only had English speaking tours in between of this show. And the way it works in Korea is that it's not one actor who's cast in a role. All the main roles will have three or even four actors. And the reason for this is it's very much inspired by idol culture. So Jon Don Sok, my favorite is a musical theater performer, and that's what he does. He trained in operatically and went into musical theatre. 

But a lot of the artists who do musicals are either former K-pop singers or current K-pop singers who do a musical and then release an album and things like that, or even famous TV actors who dabble in a bit of singing too. So the contest for tickets tends to be quite difficult because they're very famous names. So they release about four weeks of tickets at a time, and beforehand they put on social media the schedule of which actors are going to be on which nights, and then you sit there, and I... logged on when Phantom of the Opera was on sale for the time I was going. The second they went on sale, I was 9500 and something in the queue. That's how popular some of them get. Luckily I managed. I only had one show I was able to get to, and luckily I got the tickets. 

But as well as that side of things, with the really big name shows, they have a district called [?De Hang Yo], which is a university area, so it's quite vibrant youth culture, and it's full of something like 100 small to medium theatres. And you can see comedies, dramas and also small musicals, and those are often the ones that are locally produced, original musicals in Korean. So when I went this time, I pre booked a couple of big ones, and then we went down to dahangio, and on the day, just got tickets for matinee tickets for an evening show.

Kate Cooper 22:07

That sounds brilliant. Now you've mentioned a number of languages that you have mastered or have started learning. A person who is fluent in six or more languages is known as a hyper polyglot, according to worldwide interpreters.com.au, these individuals are rare and make up less than 1% of the world's population. What is it that you love about learning and using diverse languages?

Nicki Markus 22:36

I'm always reluctant to say I'm fluent. I think it's certainly in the French and German I've studied since I was in my teens. So those ones are at the upper end and are reasonably advanced. But for some of the others, I sort of hover between beginner to intermediate, and it's always finding the time around work to study, especially when you've got nine or eight or nine on the go to have enough time for them. But for me, it's it's something I do because I'm passionate and interested. So if it takes me five years to become fluent instead of one, that doesn't worry me. 

But I think what I love is that you do get a wonderful introduction to different cultures, because you can learn so much about the sort of culture of a country by how they speak and the type of language they use, like obviously, with the Asian ones I'm doing now, politeness and honorifics and things are a major element that you depending on if you're speaking to someone older or higher up in the organisation than you... have to speak differently in how you'd speak to a child. And there's a lot of language around that hierarchy that we don't really get as much in the European languages.

Kate Cooper 23:38

And you're very much a self directed language learner, as you've told us. We talked before about how your pen power relationships have helped you with characterisations. Do they also help to keep you motivated in learning your language? Is that your main source of motivation?

Nicki Markus 23:59

I don't think it's my main source. It definitely contributes. Sometimes I've not had pen pals before starting a language. So at the moment, I have a couple of people I write to in Korea, in Japan, but I've only started writing to them in the last year or so through an app called slowly. There's a lot of pen pal apps out there now, but this one, it's kind of mid to mirror the old fashioned snail mail, in that you write your sort of email to them, but it only delivers it after a certain time period, depending on how far they are from you, so it might be one day or two days later that the message gets to them. 

So it's meant to be a sort of mix between old fashioned letters and the sort of modern instantaneous apps. So those people I've obviously started writing to more because I want to practice and want to make friends and get to use the language for me, often it's other sort of cultural elements that I'm consuming that leads to it. Obviously, the very early ones were school directed, so I didn't get any choice. But then, as I mentioned, Czech came about because of Czech musicals. Danish came about because of Danish films, and then manga and anime for Japanese, Korean drama for and then Korean musicals as well for Korean and the Chinese more, because of the family connection. So it tends to be the sort of stuff that I'm consuming. 

And obviously, as I mentioned in our previous week, like I'm reading a lot of these translated Chinese gay romance novels now as well. So that's all the cultural elements sort of filtering into my learning of Chinese as well, which is brilliant.

Kate Cooper 25:26

Because to be able to understand Chinese, because you need to understand the concept of four character metaphors, which can be conveyed in translation, but to actually understand them in the original would be really special. 

Nicki Markus 25:42

And I think for Chinese as well, it's interesting doing the Japanese Korean and Chinese, because we have a lot of influence, obviously, of Chinese on Japanese and Korean over the years, both of them adopted the Chinese characters until Hangul was invented for the Korean alphabet. And so I do find there's a lot of very close vocab as you're learning words, particularly when they're related. As you mentioned, those those idioms, the four character idioms, they're used in Korean as well, so they all sort of translate across between them.

Kate Cooper 26:12

That sounds so good, so interesting. So Nicky, what are you working on next? 

Nicki Markus 26:19

So in terms of writing, as I mentioned last week, I've been on a bit of a break, and not because I've lost the love of writing. It's just been a matter of time, a bit of disillusionment over the whole process of trying to get your books out there. But I definitely have ideas on the back burner. I've been keeping my mind active with a bit of fan fiction here and there in between, and I have some ideas that I would love to get back to, hopefully in the not too distant future,

Kate Cooper 26:44

And I'm just going to ask you quickly, fan fiction... could you explain what that actually is? 

Nicki Markus 26:51

Of course. So that's when you take an existing story, and it could be from any medium. It could be a book, a film, a TV series, and you write your own version, like maybe the film finished, but you think there's something else the characters could do, and you pen a story. So you obviously can't make money from this because of copyright, but it's just, you can just share it with other fans and enjoy your fandom together. A lot of it tends to be, it's not exclusively, but there is a big emphasis in some circles on what we call slash fan fiction. So that's would be when you do a gay pairing that wasn't gay in the original, like maybe the villain and the hero, you decide they actually don't hate each other, they're just denying their love, and you write the fan fiction story to bring them together.

Kate Cooper 27:34

Thank you so much, Nicki. Our guest on emerging writers today was Nicki Marcus, who writes fiction under the names Nicki J Marcus and Asta Idonea. 

This program can be heard at the same time each week here on Vision Australia radio, VA radio, on digital, online at va radio.org and also on Vision Australia radio podcasts, where you can catch up on earlier episodes. Thanks for listening to this Vision Australia Radio podcast. Don't forget to subscribe on your preferred podcast platform. Visit varadio.org for more.

ID  28:25

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