Spotlight on Nina Bangs
(Published in 2002)

By Cheryl Bolen

Nina Bangs spent the greater part of the 1990s flirting with Harlequin, but a marriage between the two was never consummated.

In the early 90s, Nina's offbeat, humoristic writing propelled her to win the Harlequin Voice of Tomorrow contest, and she subsequently worked with a Toronto editor. All to no avail.

Then in 1997, Nina's short contemporary (also humorous) was a Golden Heart finalist, and she embarked on another affair with the world's largest romance publisher. All to no avail.

In the meantime, she was working on a humorous paranormal. In 1998 it, too, was a Golden Heart finalist, but this time she had sold the manuscript before she arrived in Anaheim for the RWA national convention.

Leisure bought the book (Original Sin) for its new Wink & a Kiss line. In fact, Nina was one of the line's first authors.

It was not just Leisure which bought Nina. It was Leisure's editorial director, Alicia Condon. A really, really big editor (though she's really quite tiny).

And thus, Nina became happily wed to a house that loves her. No sooner had she sold her first book than Condon asked Nina to write a novella for an anthology. Then another. And another book, last year's The Pleasure Master, which hit the Walden's Top 10 list and which has now gone into a second printing.

This month her third book, Night Games, was published. To give readers some idea of Nina's offbeat sense of humor, this book features a hero who comes back in time from 2500 to the present because he needs R & R from his job on the Testosterone Titans. He's the MVP (most valuable penis) of the team, which wins the sex Super Bowl every year in a culture where sex has become a spectator sport.

Leisure is so high on Nina, they've selected her to be the second author in a new series of female James Bond spoofs. Editor Chris Keesler is overseeing the line; hence, Nina has found one more editor who loves her.

And in late April, the big, big editor at St. Martin's, Jennifer Enderlin, contacted Nina and asked her to write for them.

It looks as if she can safely thumb her nose in Harlequin's face now.

In the meantime, Nina's plugging away to meet her June deadline while teaching fourth-grade full time in the Clear Creek school district. During the school year she gets up at 3 or 4 a.m. and writes.

Nina is one school teacher who would dearly love to quit and write full time. But there's just one problem. Money. She's single and has to live off her income, and Leisure is not noted for its generous contracts.

Maybe St. Martin's will be better.