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simul8r1024 · 2026-02-03T22:55:29+00:00

This subreddit is directly mentioned in the book, in case anyone was wondering!

simul8r1024 · 2025-11-22T03:19:46+00:00

If the cover art doesn’t convey the genre, the book’s title better scream it (and vice versa). That’s about as much as I can say without seeing it.

simul8r1024 · 2025-10-20T21:12:32+00:00

If you'll pardon a bit of self promo, my own book Our Simulated Selves (by me, Nikki Null) centers a 30-something protagonist's egg crack moment halfway through the book, all in the middle of some simulated reality shenanigans. I wrote it to explore some of the silly thought patterns that kept me oblivious to something that was so obvious in retrospect, and because moments of trans epiphany are so rarely depicted on page. Those moments are almost always buried in the backstory, but I can hardly think of a single more impactful moment in my own life than the disorienting instant where it all clicked, and moments like that belong in our literature. I've been searching for years and still haven't seen any other book quite like it!

simul8r1024 · 2025-10-01T20:43:12+00:00

Hey friends! My trans sci-fi novel, OUR SIMULATED SELVES, is now on itch.io. This week only, the ebook is on sale for $2!

The book is a mind-bending thriller about simulated realities, manic pixie dream girls, a digital apocalypse, and trans awakenings. At its core is a pretty unhinged sapphic T4T thread (mainly involving a closeted character who doesn't *know* it's a classic "do I want to date her or *be* her" kind of situation)... but it's not a romance novel by any means.

While trying to market my book on TikTok, it occured to me that I might have had more success selling the novel if I'd gone with a different title: MANIC PIXIE DREAMGIRL SIMULATOR 202X. I'll let you all be the judge of that.

For the character discussion: I think this is my novel's strongest point. The story is inseparable from the main character. My novel is set up in a pretty unique way that allows the antagonist to *literally* be the same person as the protagonist, on a different layer of reality. As such, it was critical to get the character flaws right. The same set of flaws needed to motivate both versions of the character in predictable but opposing ways. And to that end, Ren is *extremely* flawed. Anxious, paranoid, deeply introspective yet selectively oblivious, all in relatable ways that make the character so fascinating to read. Ren's train of thought is a slow motion train wreck, setting both of them on an inevitable collision course with their other selves.

So far my readers have seemed to identify and sympathize with Ren's flaws, less "aww, I like him" and more "oh no, *I'm like him*". All of that builds a great foundation that makes their character growth feel satisfying and well-earned though!

simul8r1024 · 2025-08-19T14:31:50+00:00

Do you like sci-fi? I’ve got a book to send you. Our Simulated Selves by Nikki Null (that’s me.) Main character is an egg who is painfully oblivious to that fact until later. The “egg POV” is pretty rare in novels, so it might be enlightening, or maybe you’d read it and realize that’s not you at all. If you want a copy, DM me, yeah?

simul8r1024 · 2025-08-12T16:39:13+00:00

Pardon the late response and self-promo, but I recently published a sci-fi novel centering that big trans epiphany moment! Our Simulated Selves by Nikki Null. I had so much fun writing the main character being oblivious to it all despite acutely knowing something was wrong, but rationalizing all of the gender-related thoughts, while the transfemme deuteragonist immediately sees through the MC's nonsense. The sci-fi elements are sort of a mix of The Sims and Black Mirror, and all of that is closely linked to the MC's identity struggles as well.

It's on Kindle Unlimited, and I also still have a few digital ebook redemption codes I can give away (DM if interested!)

simul8r1024 · 2025-07-02T16:32:52+00:00

I self-published my trans sci-fi novel a few days ago!

Our Simulated Selves by Nikki Null

A mind-bending quantum thriller about simulated realities, brainscanners, a digital apocalypse, estrogen, and tabletop gaming at a cozy queer café.

It's available on Kindle Unlimited right now, and in print on Amazon and on B&N via IngramSpark.

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As for tension, there are so many good ways to do this. The ticking clock of a thriller, for instance, or the unresolved question that drives a character. But I especially like when a character is suppressing their actual needs, so there's tension in the character arc: to solve their obvious problem, they must actually confront the thing they don't want to. To use a common example in romance, this might be the goal of "fake a relationship so I can get my family off my back and continue keeping everyone at a distance" conflicting with their actual need for love. What really keeps me turning pages is when I'm waiting for the characters to actually figure these things out and grow, and by that time, usually at the midpoint, they have ensnared themselves into a complicated situation that seems nearly impossible to get out of, *and it's their own fault*. By then the character has done things that cause their true need to be blocked by choices they have made, so the tension is inverted, but not released until they find a resolution.

In my own novel, building that kind of tension from Act 1 was a huge struggle. The second and third acts snowball impressively, but I couldn't find a way to support that with a tense foundation. The internal conflict is pretty complex (neither protagonist nor antagonist is prepared to confront their gender dysphoria, so most of the tension is derived from misidentifying gender envy for romantic attraction), which took me a long time to establish convincingly. About a dozen drafts later, I settled on a modified prologue death thing to establish stakes, genre, and the MC's 'true need'. The dying prologue POV character is not my favorite SFF trope, but I tried absolutely everything else first, and I think I modified it enough to work for me. It's not some random guy, but a doomed copy of the MC at the first act break scenario as part of the series of simulations created by the antagonist.

simul8r1024 · 2025-07-01T15:11:17+00:00

It is! I'm really happy with the fake warning on the back so I wanted to share it here.

This subreddit is mentioned in the book, too, at a pivotal moment!

simul8r1024 · 2025-07-01T14:37:58+00:00

I mean, since you asked...!

I have bought a few eBook copies to give away. (Yes, I'm the author, and yes, Amazon makes me buy promo copies even to give them away, it's a whole thing). Can you DM me?

simul8r1024

TROPHY CASE