For our next interview with an author from The Elementals, we have Heather Young-Nicols.
Heather Young-Nichols is a USA Today Bestselling Author of YA and contemporary romance author and a native of the great and often very cold state of Michigan. She is better known at home and to her friends as the Snarker-in-Chief, a job she excels at beyond anything she could have imagined. She loves many things, but especially cold coffee, hot books, and baseball. But not necessarily in that order.
You can find out more about her on her website: http://www.heatheryoungnichols.com
You can also see more on her Facebook, Twitter, Goodreads and Instagram accounts.
And don’t forget, you can buy The Elementals from Amazon UK and Amazon US!
The anthology theme is ‘Elementals’, what does this mean to you and how did you interpret it in your story?
Elementals to me revolve around the elements. As this is an elemental witch anthology, I focused on a witch that can use the elements from another series of mine.
Where is your story set? Is it a real world location or one you made up? What drove you to set your story there?
The story is not in a real world location. As the first story takes place in a fictional town called Warwick, and the warlocks came from another fictional town, I created a third for Devious Magic.
Are there any personal experiences in your story? Things you have done, people you have met etc.?
There are some personal experiences in the story, but they aren’t unique to me. There’s a carnival/fair. There are rides. Things of every day nature that most people can place themselves.
What drives the main characters of your story?
My characters are driven by a few things. The desire to do a good job. The desire to have their owns lives, but in the end, they are driven by taking down a dark coven.
What was your writing ‘method’ for this anthology? How did you progress from initial idea to the final, published story?
My process is always the same. I have a concept, plot it out (which is crazy as a former pantser), then get to writing. Then comes editing, more editing, even more editing, proofing, and bam. Finished book.
Describe the premise of your story.
Oliver is sent to keep Mila safe from a dark coven trying to recruit her. She has no knowledge of the world of magic. Which means, Oliver not only needs to protect her, he must also teach her about the abilities she has no idea of. All the while, he must also fight his growing feelings for her.
In the next of our interviews of the authors of 
within it is not. The reason I chose this place is because my love of baseball came from my father, and this is where he was born. I wanted to include him in my story in some way, so chose to set it in his home town.
Timber Philips hails from a land filled with beauty and steeped in magic; the Pacific Northwest. She swears you can see fairies and goblins, magic and promise around every tree and in every drop of water and she shares that magic whenever she can. She loves welcoming everyone to her worlds of romance rooted in fable and fantasy. 
as her pen name, but she had an influence on my life and my writing work in more than one way. In the height of ‘Twilightmania’, she was publishing novels about vampires that were refreshing and unique. The town of Morganville was something akin to what could exist in White Wolf’s World of Darkness – a place ruled by vampires – and it contained a bunch of entertaining characters and stories that I could not stop reading. It represented for me the epitome of urban fantasy writing. Few authors have the nounce to not only make Oliver Cromwell a character but also to hide him under an assumed name and leave it up to readers to work out who he actually is (by working it out from his birth date given in one of the books…). Oh and not to mention one of the characters might possibly be Merlin… sort of…
What is the earliest memory you have of writing? What did you write about?
Author. Born and raised in Chicago, IL, writing has always been a passion for her. As a girl, Jessica enjoyed reading tales of fantasy and mystery but she always hoped to find characters that looked like her. Those characters came few and far in between. When they did appear they often played a minor role and were background figures. This is the inspiration for her writing today and the reason why she focuses on writing Characters of Color in Fantasy. Representation matters in all mediums and Jessica is determined to give the young girl who looks like her, a story full of characters that she can relate to.
Lurking Musings 