My first self-published novel, Book of the Flower Garlands--spotlight & writer's memories
a meditation on Marco & Hassan ;)
In January 2022, I self-published my first novel, Book of the Flower Garlands.
I wrote Flower Garlands in the year 2019. The world was different then. I was a different person then. I had not yet gone through so many things, passed through so many portals, that would help make me the writer and person I am today.
Flower Garlands is romantic. It’s atmospheric. It’s dreamy. It’s the last “real love story” I would write for many years. I have not written a romance like that since then.
I often reflect that, with all that has happened, both in me and in the world, I will never be able to write a story like that again. I guess I am more experienced than I was 6 years ago when I wrote that book. I had just finished my PhD and started my “big girl” teaching job! I hadn’t yet struggled through a global pandemic and the breakdown of my life as I knew it! I hadn’t yet had years of trying to conceive, or my pregnancy, or my birth, or my baby! I hadn’t yet experienced the flowering of my writing and creative life that would begin in 2021–all the Mistress M stuff. (I mean, the creative dominatrix has always been inside of me, since I was born, and before. She just hadn’t been introduced to the world yet. :)
All that may be true. But I also think it’s true that the me I am now could never write a book like Flower Garlands ever again. And there is a sadness in that. There is a grieving, a bittersweet letting go of who I used to be as an artist, and who I cannot be again.
I am so happy that I wrote and published Flower Garlands. This record, this memory, of me, my writer’s self, my heart, and the world will now always exist. If you’re looking for some kinda sign about whether you should write a book that’s calling to you, welp, here it is. Later you will thank you for it.
Flower Garlands holds a sweet simplicity. It has a romantic singularity of purpose–it is about two men, falling in love, their different lives and worlds colliding as always happens when we fall in love, and trying to find some way to be together. Flower Garlands has an erotic clarity. It was not at all my first time writing about sex, but it was my first time publishing an erotic novel. Flower Garlands is explicit. It’s graphic. There are some deeply intense sex scenes. (Want to know what kind? Haha. You’ll just have to read it.) Flower Garlands is a novel of first times. Within this couple, one man is falling in love for the first time, and the other is experiencing a queer awakening. I wrote it for anyone who’s fallen in love for the first time, remembering what that feels like, and for anyone who has, or who someday will, at any age, have a queer awakening of their own.
As a novelist, my two pillars are character and place. These two literary aspects drive the flow of my writing. Character and place are everything to me.
The main characters of Book of the Flower Garlands are Marco and Hassan. Most of the book is written from the perspective of Hassan. He and I know each other very well; he has been with me since I began writing about this story universe, as a young writer in the year 2011. In Flower Garlands, Hassan is 54 years old. He is from Egypt but lives in Athens, Greece. Because we’ve been in each other’s lives for so long, I’ve gotten to watch Hassan’s development as a person and a character over time. In this book, he is going to fall in love with another man for the first time, and it’s going to change everything for him.
His lover is Marco, a young man from New York City. (If you know Mira, from my latest book, Marco is her twin brother, and a really important part of her story.) Neither Hassan nor Marco is much like me. But in Marco there are aspects of me, fictionalized and alchemized: being in an intense and transformational relationship with a much older person at a young age, something that happened to me at the same age as Marco but with, sadly, far less romance and much more disastrous results; Marco’s whole teacher’s pet / straight-A student vibe is 10000% your girl; the New York City swagger; and, something a little harder to name, but Marco also shares with me a childhood that crystallized into adulthood too early, long before we were ready, because of a difficult and impoverished childhood.
None of my characters are me. And all of my characters are me. This is, to me, the great paradox of working mystically with our “fictional” characters.
The place of Book of the Flower Garlands is Athens, Greece. Oh, Athens! Athens is the city of my heart. I traveled there the first time in 2011, my first time ever leaving the US, and many times since then. My academic training is in ancient and art history, archaeology, and classical languages. I spent my 20s traveling all around the world to present at academic conferences, go to museums, and visit excavations. And I couldn’t be more grateful for the decisions that younger me made, choosing to follow her passion and her heart. Those decisions have repaid me thousandfold, in ways I could never have predicted. (I ain’t really an advice girl. I think the juice is in making our own decisions. But if I could say anything to young students, it would be not to follow the money. Follow your heart. Money will come. And support will come when you need it.)
The vibe, the energy, the pulse, the fragrance, the meaning of Athens is in every line of Book of the Flower Garlands. It’s my love letter to a city that has given me so much.
As I bet you know, Athens has a sacred place in gay history. It felt like the perfect place to set my book about a man’s gay awakening. The symbology of the queer ancient Mediterranean world is also in the book’s title: the flower garlands are a call back to the poetry of Sappho, lesbian icon and poet ancestor and elder. In some of her poems, she sings of weaving flower garlands with her girlfriends, in honor of Aphrodite, the goddess of love.
People have asked me more than once what it was like writing a gay love story from the perspective of two men. (A dear friend asked me this at the book launch party I threw myself to celebrate the publication of Flower Garlands, when I hosted an “ask me anything.”) I believe that any of us can write about any character that calls to our heart, when we do so with compassion, awareness, and love. Writing about Marco and Hassan stretched me as a writer, growing my empathy and understanding. I think we should all stretch ourselves as writers and people by writing characters who are very different from us.
While writing and editing Flower Garlands, I worked with an erotica writing teacher who was a gay man. He helped me think through questions of gender and sexuality as I wrote this book, and others. I will share that I am a sapphic girl at heart, ;). All my early romantic and sexual experiences were with girls. Attraction to and relationships with men came later for me. Writing Flower Garlands helped me celebrate love in all its different configurations and flavors. (Yes, I know that is cliche. I’m sorry-not-sorry.) It also unlocked my writer’s heart, opening the door for me to write about more complex love stories and relationship structures later, like the polyamory of Mira’s Story.
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Marco and Hassan stayed with me for years after I wrote Flower Garlands. They were the characters who were with me during the pandemic and the lockdowns. I’ll always be grateful for them, and hold a special place in my heart for them, because of that time we spent together.
My writing during the pandemic was different. I definitely had more time for my writing. But it was different time: intense, uninterrupted, as singularly and internally focused as the snake eating her own tail.
I decided to try something new as a writer during the pandemic. I have always written for myself first and “the market,” or even my audience or my ideal reader, second. But in 2020, I decided to try abandoning any sense of rigidity, awareness, or control around what a book was supposed to be like, what it was supposed to include, how it was supposed to be paced, and what was supposed to happen in a book’s plot.
I wrote long, meandering novels that were plotless. Because I wrote the characters through the pandemic and the lockdowns along with me, they too were living in isolation, in restriction, in a never-ending loop. They experienced panic, uncertainty, and fear alongside gratitude, connection, and love. They had to face their thoughts and their shadows, like I did. They had to interrogate what was sustainable in our life and world, like we all did. They had to build new structures, open new doors.
During the pandemic, because I was writing what I wanted to write and not what was “good for the market,” and because I was living each day waking up next to my shadow, I went all in writing about fetish. I wrote Marco and Hassan through some scenes and sequences of sexual fetish of kinds that I would not share publicly. (I would certainly share these excerpts with the right reader, if peeps are interested. ;) But that’s the point. These writings were not for possible publication. They were for the characters. They were for me. Those “unsayable” things got to be said. They got to be born, exist, live, breathe on the page. Writing is mystical. Once something has been written, even if no one else ever reads it, even if its physical (or digital!) being is destroyed, still it lives forever. It has been said. And its writer is forever changed by the saying.
Some of what I wrote for Marco and Hassan during that time has been published, in my short story collection The Book of Three Wishes, which I published last summer. And some of it remains in the chamber.
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Book of the Flower Garlands also has a sequel, if you wanna see what happens with Marco and Hassan next! I published Book of Circles and Triangles in June 2023. It was the first novel I published with the brilliant editing, guidance, and support of my writing mentor and editor, Jan Fortune. Working with Jan was, and is, the perfect blend of autonomy and support. I can’t thank or recommend her enough.
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I have loved self-publishing my books. (I actually have 11 self-published titles to date, with more in the works.) I have had autonomy over every aspect of the writing, publishing, and promotion of my books. I worked with multiple editors, readers, critique partners, and book promotion services of my choosing, all folks who believed in me, my work, and my vision. And I had the final say–I had freedom to accept or set aside any suggestion, idea, or feedback that I received on my books.
If you want to build your own powers of creative decision-making, of writer’s intuitive knowing, and of doing what feels best for your own work, then I’d highly recommend self-publishing a book. Anyone can do it. All are invited. The process is not hard at all, in terms of the technology and the logistics.
If you’d like some guidance around writing and publishing a book in a way that feels intuitive and aligned for you, I’m offering another spot in my year-long book writing journey, Into The Chamber: The Intimate Author’s Container.
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And some prompts for reflecting on your own writer’s journey, wherever you are right now:
Make a timeline of your writer’s life. What have you written? When during your life did you write it? How has your life shaped your writing life?
What version of your writer’s self are you letting go of now?
What in your creative life needs to be grieved?
What have you created that you could never create again?
Who are your (inner) characters, and how have they shaped you?
What do you need to write today? What needs to be said: beyond the market, beyond what a book is supposed to look like, beyond the external gaze, beyond the rules?
Love always,
Nikki / M
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Hey. I’m Mistress M / Nikki Ali. I’m a writer, writing guide, teacher, dancer, and creative activist based in Newark, New Jersey.
I am a person whose ancestors were enslaved people who helped build the structures of this country where I live. I stand with the lightworkers + those seeking the liberation of all peoples from oppression. I live + create most humbly on Mohican + Lenape territory, and I lovingly acknowledge the ancestors + elders, past and present, of the land on which we live.
Do YOU know the ancestral elders of the land on which you live? Check out this tool, Native Land, to learn more. Educate thyself. ♥️
My creative works, outlook, and spiritual practice are all delightfully queer. If you, too, support the beautiful rainbow of all human experience, then I’ve got a table here with plenty of open seats, and you can totally sit with me. 🏳️🌈
I am a creative dominatrix who believes that everyone is creative and that everyone can find the creative rhythm that works for them, and that supports them in reaching their creative dreams.
I am the founder and editor-in-chief of Mistress M’s Community Publishing House, a full-service, boutique book incubator where we hold the values that no matter what our hearts desire to create, there is an audience seeking it; that, by putting our work out into the world, our audience will find us; and that there IS space in the marketplace for the offerings of our hearts.
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If you wanna support this small black-woman-owned creative business, :D, I have SO many offerings cooking in the chamber.
Find all my good things at my new home on the web, mistressm.podia.com.
Work with me in a private 1:1, year-long writing container to write the book of your heart: Into The Chamber: The Intimate Author’s Container.
Make your writing your activism. Celebrate the rainbow of humanness over in Writing Gender Magic-a 7-day self-guided journaling course for exploring + celebrating your gender identity.
Write through the tarot with me (if you like mystical + esoteric writing too, and questions without answers)! Our self-guided online tarot writing course is right here. <3
For all my published works, from my own queer erotic romance novels penned under my author avatar Nikki Ali, to books on writing guidance from your creative domme, to my popular community anthology Heart Art, check out my Amazon author page here.
To order Mira’s Story, my novel published by Cinnamon Press in April 2025, find all the links here:
Find Mira’s Story @ the Cinnamon Press website
Find Mira’s Story @ Barnes & Noble
And, yes, you can also find Mira’s Story on Amazon.
To join my creative circle, in which I host monthly writing salons where we create together + practice our craft, support me on Patreon.
For quick + dirty writing guides, and oracle card readings from your favorite creative domme, here’s my writing Etsy store, WritingMagicBoutique.
I work with writers 1:1 to create the writing rhythm that works for them, to unearth & polish the gems of their stories, and to help them reach their creative dreams. Interested in 1:1 work? Contact me at mistressmwriter@gmail.com.
For all things Mistress M, follow me on Instagram @mistressmwriter. Be sure to hit up the link in my bio to check out ALL my offerings.🙏🏾
Fantastic prompts and always love vistiting Marco and Hassan. So agree about the way characters are us and not us at the same time and how some books have a clarity and simplicity that doesn't come again for all the progress we go on to make as writers later.