Nikki Harmon, an alumna of The Philadelphia High School for Girls, Wesleyan University and Temple University, has always pursued academic challenges. However, cursed with an overabundance of curiosity, she chose a creative lifestyle as a way to indulge her many interests. As a filmmaker, television producer and a teacher of the aforementioned, she gets to spend her days weaving stories and images together and trying to make sense of it all. Writing her first novel began as a personal challenge, specifically, the NaNoWriMo write 50,000 words in a month challenge. And so, without any training or planning at all, she did. And out came a book. Despite the guilty pleasure that came with ignoring her three children that month, she didn’t write again for three years. Then, with the encouragement of friends, she decided to dig the book out, make it better and hope somebody else would enjoy reading it as much as she enjoyed writing it. Having ruined her eyes at a young age reading Stephen King by flashlight, it is only fitting that this Philly native finally come full circle to squint at her own scratchings on the page. Here is one truth learned ….it takes much longer to write a book than it does to read one. Especially when one has dropped out of typing class in high school.

Born and raised an hour east and a million miles away from Manhattan, Ellen was an avid reader from the start often preferring the company of books over people

At 15 she lied about her age to attend the Outward Bound School: Hurricane Island. Rock climbing, sailing for days at a stretch and spending half a week alone with only a fire kit, water and a plastic tarp, she returned home with a valuable life lesson: “Failure is not the end. Those who love you don’t stop because you failed. Failure gives you the opportunity to try again, or start a new path.”

Thanks to a high school English teacher who served a literary feast of the classics, modern lit and Shakespeare, Ellen fell in love with the written word. This culminated in a law degree. Ellen now practices law by day while continuing her linguistic love affair in her off time.

Ellen credits early internet chat rooms on AOL, Yahoo and Netscape with giving birth to fan fiction, giving a story a platform like no other. Within a year or so of this new medium, an entire new universe had opened up entirely to original lesbian fiction.

Thanks to the encouragement of others in the online community, Ellen wrote a full-length novel, and now, after editing, re-editing, and re-re-editing, that story, Safe Haven, is being published by Desert Palm Press.