In the podcast (below), I discuss my participation in the first annual Tarpon Springs Book Fair, changes I’ve made to my book covers for the sake of wider market appeal, and the challenges posed to a writer who just happens to be a nudist (me) who struggles to overcome the limits put upon us by the labels we wear.
Okay, folks, I must admit something before we get into my latest podcast. It seems like I made a very dumb mistake. Have you ever played the Don’t Look at the Chicken game? It’s basically just one screenshot. At the top are the words “Don’t look at the chicken.” Below that is a picture of a chicken. And overlaid on top of that picture of the chicken are the words “Game Over.” It’s impossible to beat this game because your mind immediately goes to the chicken, or it’s like someone asking you not to think of anything. Of course, that’s impossible. As soon as someone says, “Don’t think of anything,” you will think of something. That’s kind of the mistake I made because for the longest time now, I have been trying to get people to stop thinking about nudity and nudism concerning the Books of Aenya.
It’s not that I am in any way ashamed of my lifestyle. I’m naked 24/7 when possible, and I am forthcoming about it to anyone who asks. But storytelling matters a lot more to me, and unfortunately, expressing my free-body philosophy can be detrimental to my career. In an ideal world, nobody would care how I live my life or how my characters live their lives. But we aren’t living in Ilmarinen. In modern-day America, nudism tends to limit me, tends to skew how readers perceive my work, which is why sometimes, the most uncomfortable thing we can wear is a label.
The Aenya Series is so much more than naked characters. It is a vast, complex fantasy setting, which I think is comparable to any other setting out there. But because two of the books, you know, have naked characters in them, the algorithm focuses a tremendous amount of attention on that aspect of the books, which I have been trying really hard to steer my readers away from. But what I inadvertently did in this particular podcast, a mistake I realized only when I went back and listened to it, was that I talked about nudity a lot, which, again, is self-defeating. So that’s kind of my blunder. Trying to tell people that my book really has little to do with nudity, and then proceeding to talk about nudity for a very good chunk of an hour. So it is what it is. And I’m thinking that in future podcasts, I will have the good sense to not even bring it up at all, because that’s really the only way to beat the “don’t look at the chicken game”—it’s to not even play it.
Note: This transcript has been heavily cut to focus on the naturist aspects of my podcast.
Not to be sexist, but women are typically more interested in feelings, emotions, and thoughts than men are. Most modern books deal with things that cannot be experienced in games and movies, which is why I think women are more attracted to reading. Of all the books I sold at my most recent book event in Tarpon Springs, all my buyers were women, except for two. Two guys bought my book. One of them was with his girlfriend. The other guy, of course, bought Ages of Aenya for the naked girl on the cover, which is funny because I did everything I could to downplay Ages of Aenya and talk up my other books.
Look at the most recent books being published. They’re all written by women, by young female authors. I think they know and understand their audience. They understand what other women would like to read. I guess it just means that I need to skew my writing slightly to appeal to this wider demographic.
So, I’m really excited about doing more of these book fairs. I love meeting people in real life, and I think this is an excellent opportunity to meet readers face to face. The experience is so different than when you’re online, trying to promote yourself as an author, and you have this stupid algorithm, which I despise, constantly misrepresenting me.
After buying some of my books from Amazon to sell at the event, next to the purchase page, I see the words “books related to,” with a list of titles that have nothing to do with Aenya, except for the nudity. Now I’ve talked about this many times before. What the flying **** does my book have to do with **** or erotica or just plain nudism? The books Amazon recommends to my readers are not even fiction. It’s just: here’s a smutty pamphlet about a young girl that gets off by being an exhibitionist, or the book is recommending places to go naked, or whatever. Sometimes it will be fiction. But they’re not really stories. They’re just thinly veiled arguments for nudism, where the main characters are nudists, but the author is not interested in telling a story. All he’s really interested in is promoting his lifestyle. It’s aggravating to have the Aenya Saga connected to these books just because I created naked characters.
I am not a nudist who writes, I am a writer who also happens to be a nudist.
I was inspired by Tarzan by Edgar Rice Burroughs, who also created John Carter and Dejah Thoris. John Carter goes completely naked in the books, as does his female companion, Dejah Thoris. Before the British arrived, and despite what Disney will tell you, Tarzan never wore his traditional loincloth. Mowgli from The Jungle Book also goes completely naked in his story. If you read Planet of the Apes, the astronauts who crash land on the Planet of the Apes spend almost the entire book in the buff. This idea of nudity in fiction is nothing new. And in the old days, people could read a story about a nude character and not think, oh, this is ****, or this is just an argument for nudism. When people think about Tarzan, they don’t think: this is a book about the naked guy. No, this is about the guy who lives in the jungle and wrestles with lions. Calling him the naked guy would just diminish him so significantly. You wouldn’t call John Carter of Mars erotica because the two main characters traipse around Barsoom in nothing but their bare skin. These characters inspired Xandr and Thelana, as did Greek mythology, where Hercules, Theseus, Perseus, and all the Greek heroes were depicted in paintings and sculpture in nothing but their chiseled physiques. Visit any European museum, and you will find statues of all the Greek heroes naked. Does this mean that, you know, Hercules is a nudist hero? Obviously not.
I could have made Xandr and Thelana fully textile characters, and nothing would change. The story wouldn’t change. All the major events that happen in the book and the struggles they endure would be the same, even in The Feral Girl, wherein Thelana goes nude 99% of the time. If she wore a loincloth, she’d still be fighting for survival, avoiding dinosaurs, trying to find civilization, and missing her family. The story wouldn’t be any different, with perhaps the minor exception of when she shows up in the town of Makria. That’s where she ends up, in this little village. When the people see her for the first time, she doesn’t understand their shocked response because for her, nudity is a perfectly normal thing. But for them, it’s taboo. It’s a social taboo, and she needs to learn how outsiders view the human body. But again, maybe if she showed up in a very Puritanical town or maybe an Islamic-like culture where women are completely covered, and she shows up wearing just a loincloth, they would have had the same reaction. So I wouldn’t have to change a thing, and the story would be the same. But you can’t say that about these other books, which are just written to promote nudism, because if you remove the nudity, the book doesn’t make sense. This is why I love these book signings. When people come up to me, they don’t have any preconceived notions about what I’m writing. They’re open-minded and willing to talk to me about my story, and I can explain to them that this is what I wrote. It’s not erotica, it’s not ****, it isn’t even really nudism. It’s a real story. And I can do that. I can present myself in a way that accurately reflects the world of Aenya and not what Amazon just assumes, or Facebook, or Twitter, or any of these other social media platforms. How they just choose to label me. I can go to these book signings without a label, and it’s wonderful.
Another big change I made was with the cover of Ages of Aenya. Now, part of the problem I had, which I discussed earlier, is that many times, Ages of Aenya will appeal to the wrong people. It appeals to people looking for erotica. And again, if you’re only interested in nudism, you won’t enjoy Ages of Aenya. If you’re just looking for sex, you’re not going to enjoy it.
At first, my thinking was, sure, there’s a naked girl on the cover, but I thought, that’s how I’m going to hook people, right? I’m going to hook people with a sexy cover, and then when they read it, they’re going to discover this epic adventure story, and they’re going to love it for what it is. But I realized that the people I was attracting weren’t interested in adventure, fantasy, and epic storytelling. They were just hoping maybe that I would be describing, I don’t know, Thelana’s boobs every other page. And when they didn’t see any of that, I think some of them might have given me a bad review because of their disappointment.
All my books are four stars and above on average, so I’m very happy with my ratings on Amazon and Goodreads. However, I do have a couple of one- and two-star reviews. And there’s no explanation. The person didn’t say, this is why I don’t like this book. And I often wonder, is it because the book didn’t appeal to what they were interested in? This is why I don’t like book reviews very much; I feel that people often do not critique the book in earnest. They’re not saying, well, the writing quality is no good, the story doesn’t make any sense, the characters are uninteresting, or the story is boring. They’re not really reviewing it for that. They’re reviewing it based on what they wanted to read. Like, I wanted erotica, I wanted sex, or I wanted this or I wanted that. And when they don’t get specifically what they were hoping to get, they give it a bad review.
When I created the original AoA cover, I was hoping to evoke a classical art feel. As I always tell my artists, I don’t want sexy pinup girls. What I want is classical art—something you might see in a museum. If you look at a lot of the old Frazetta art—this isn’t that long ago—or even the original Boris Vallejo (Boris Vallejo and Julie Bell were inspired by Frank Frazetta and a lot of their early work depicted naked men and women fighting monsters, going on exotic adventures, etc.) nobody looked at that and said, Oh, clearly this is ****, or this is meant to be erotic in some way. That’s not to say there’s not a sexual element to their art. There was, but people ultimately understood that the purpose of the art was to promote a fantasy story, an adventure story. My favorite artist is actually Frank Frazetta, and my favorite pieces of art from him often depict fully naked characters. One of them that I really love, I think my favorite piece, is called Cat Girl. She’s, like, facing the camera fully frontal, and she is just leaning up against a branch in a very swampy jungle. And she’s surrounded by large predatory cats. I think it was like a panther lazing next to her on the branch, and a tiger. And you could tell that they have a very comfortable relationship. This girl, you know, she has no fear of these cats. Maybe they’re her pets. Maybe she is a cat herself. Maybe she turns into a tiger or a panther. I don’t know. But it’s very evocative. And when you look at it, this work of art makes you think, what’s going on here? Like, who is this person? And your mind doesn’t go to sex, or at least mine doesn’t. And, of course, she’s very comfortable in her skin.
Frazetta invented the character of Vampirella, and he originally designed her without a costume. But the comic book people, well, they kind of went to him and said, hey, you know, we really can’t have a completely naked fictional character. Like, you can’t do that. So then he decided, okay. And he put her in the skimpiest possible outfit. They’re basically just strings. They’re just kind of covering her nipples and her pubic region. But again, when people think about Frazetta and his art, they think of fantasy. They’re not thinking of sex. And that’s what I was hoping to do with the original cover of Ages of Aenya, which was illustrated by a really talented guy named Zhengi Yu. And I think he did a good job. And I think a lot of people do understand what the book is about, but a lot of people don’t. Unfortunately, a lot of people take it the wrong way, and again, with the social media algorithm, when I tried to advertise Ages of Aenya, this is back in 2018, Facebook said to me, they sent me a message, saying, “we do not allow the promotion of sex services.” Not erotic art or sexy art or nude art: sex services. It was as if I were advertising for a bordello somewhere. It’s like, oh, yeah, clearly this girl that is hanging off the side of a building overlooking a medieval bazaar with a giant pyramid in the background, yeah, clearly that is meant to be for prostitution. I don’t know how insane these Facebook censors are that they can see this stuff and not recognize it as art? And there is such a long tradition, thousands of years of Michelangelo, Leonardo, Frank Frazetta, all these people that created nude art, and yet we’re living in this time and place where if it’s naked, it’s ****.
In actual bookstores, people don’t seem to have a problem with nudity. Every time I’ve gone to a bookstore and I brought my copy of Ages of Aenya, the person who runs the store looks at it and they’re like, oh, this is cool. I don’t have any problem displaying this book on my shelf where any patrons can see it. But Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube all have a problem, because for them, that’s ****. So ultimately, I said, okay, fine, maybe I have to change the cover. So, fortunately, back in 2017, when I had the book cover commissioned, I told Zhengi Yu that I wanted to have an alternate censored cover. I want one where, instead of Thelana being naked, she’s wearing her green cloak. And if you’re familiar with the book, you know she doesn’t walk naked everywhere. She won’t remain nude if she’s going into a city where everyone’s wearing clothes. So she wears a green cloak given to her by her commander, who saved her from a halfman attack. And he gives her his cloak. But then, you know, when she’s about to get into a fight or when she leaves civilization, and she’s not surrounded by people, she can easily throw it off. And now she’s back to her default state. So I did an alternate cover where she’s wearing this green cloak. And I decided this is the cover that I want to use now, because again, I’m tired of being misrepresented.
I’m actually at 125,000 words into my latest YA book and hoping to end it around 140. And I’m really hoping to get that book picked up by a big publisher. But I don’t know how they will feel seeing what the other Aenya books are like. Most of the people I’ve spoken with, like people who sell books, like these bookstore owners, tell me I have nothing to worry about. They don’t see a problem with having a kids’ book in the same universe as a naturist-themed story. But I don’t know how an agent or a publisher would feel about that. And if that’s a deal breaker, I’m prepared to change my name and the book title so that Aenya doesn’t appear. Now, would I change the names of the world in the interior? I’m hoping that I don’t have to do that. I’m hoping that I’ll be able to let my fans know that, hey, this book is actually related to Aenya, and they’ll read it. But that also, the people who only read my latest book, knowing nothing about Aenya, they’re not going to be like, what’s all this naked character stuff?
Now, because the nudity in my books is entirely innocent, I don’t think there’s any problem with kids reading them. For example, I think a young kid could read The Feral Girl and have no problem with it because it’s not sexualized. In fact, I feel that a book like The Feral Girl would be good for young people to read because it would teach them that there is nothing wrong with the human body. There’s no reason to feel ashamed, and also, there’s no reason for their bodies to be sexualized. I think these are good lessons to teach young people, but again, I feel that the messaging would probably get lost. Most parents won’t understand it and likely wouldn’t want their kids reading that unless they allow their children to read whatever and trust their kids’ judgment.
Still, I don’t know what agents would think, or what publishers would think. The world continually changes, and social attitudes regarding nudity consistently change. We have this show, Naked and Afraid, on TV, and it’s not rated R. I’ve watched it with my kids and have no problem with it. Even if they didn’t censor the nudity, again, I would have no problem with my kids seeing it. There are some nude illustrations in The Feral Girl, and I was a little worried about that at the book fair. I was worried that maybe some young kids would want to buy the book, not knowing what’s in there. And then they would take it home, and then they would say, Hey, look, Mom, look what’s in this book. And then, you know, the parents would get mad at me. But I think that people who read books are very open-minded. Of all the people who bought the book, there was only one girl whose age I wasn’t quite sure about. She looked like she might have been, I don’t know, between the ages of like 14 and like 17, 18. I’m not quite sure which. Again, I think that’s old enough to be able to handle a sketch, like a pencil sketch. I think that should be okay. But again, not knowing her parents, they might be ultra-conservative. They might find that very offensive.
There is so much lore involved in Aenya — it is essentially a post-apocalyptic world, a world moved from its original orbit to escape the expansion of its sun, which is why I get aggravated when people say, “Oh, that’s the book with the naked people in it.” Yeah, it is the book with the naked people in it. But there are so many other things going on. Incredible tidal forces will affect the world if you start shifting a planet out of its orbit. If we moved the Earth to where Jupiter is, the tidal forces would be so significant that they would wipe out most of the life on this planet. It’s going to be like having every volcano on Earth erupt. And having all the tectonic plates shift out of alignment, it’s going to result in major earthquakes, major volcanoes, major ash fall. It’s going to be a mass extinction-level event. But eventually, life on the planet starts to grow back. But because all of civilization is wiped out, human beings revert to a prehistoric state, where they are mostly naked. Because human beings in very primitive cultures often don’t wear clothes. If you visit the Amazon rainforest, you’ll find that a lot of the tribal people there live completely naked.
So this is who the Ilmar are. These people descended deep under the earth in caves, deep under the planet’s surface, to survive the cataclysm. Then, the first people to emerge from these caves found that the world was devastated, and they reverted to this primitive state of being. They became a hunting and gathering society. And the part of the world they were living in was Ilmarinen, which had a perfect climate, so they did not need to develop clothing. Here on Earth, when we started migrating around the world, we discovered places that were either too cold or too hot for human habitation, and we learned to wear clothes for survival. And then that is really what led to the taboo of nakedness. So it’s really kind of a primitive mindset. But now that we live in a world of comfort, we really don’t need to worry about wearing clothes all the time.
Of course, I could have a world where everyone is naked and the climate is perfect all over the planet. But that wouldn’t be very interesting, right? That wouldn’t have a lot of dramatic appeal. Also, because I like to write about different cultures, societies, and types of characters, there’s no nudity when you move to other parts of Aenya. So in The Princes of Aenya, the story is about the people of Tyrnael and the people of Yefira, the two civilizations I talk about in that book. And they are clothed because the climate and the culture in which they grew up were very different.
So I’m really hoping that Aenya fans get an opportunity to read all my books. But if the publisher says, sorry, but I really can’t be associating this book, which is for young adults, with these books that are not meant for young adults, then I may have to dissociate them. So, again, I’m not really sure. We’ll see what happens.
Being and Nakedness 
I’ve read your trilogy and think it’s pretty cool overall. It’s a really creative setting with lots of different climates and humanoid species, maybe too many? Bogrens, horg, halfmen, snake people, avians, and fish people, besides various human countries; I’m not sure if it’s just impressive or excessive. Did you write ‘the feral girl’ first? The wording in it sometimes is clumsy, like maybe it isn’t your native language. The other books are better in that regard. Your interest in nudism (which I share, otherwise I probably wouldn’t have found your books) does appear in the story more than it does in books like Tarzan or the Jungle book. It could be mentioned less, without changing the story, if you’re going for a general audience.
The thing that bugs me is the orbital mechanics. As near as I can tell, the planet is orbiting a gas giant, yet is tidally locked to its sun, rather than to the gas giant it is much closer to. Am I wrong about that? I’m pretty sure the law of gravity wouldn’t allow that. I’ve long been interested in how life would work on a tidally locked planet, so it’s cool that you gave it a try.
One more thing: Ecthros son of Xenos. Knowing koiné Greek, I felt like he would turn out to be a bad guy or something, with a name like Enemy son of Foreigner. Just curious what went into your name choices.
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Thanks, I guess?
This was a rather tepid response to my work, I have to admit, but I appreciate it at any rate.
Now to address a few of your comments:
Do you know how many billions of species exist on Earth? Quite a few, actually. Or are are you referring to too many intelligent species?
In that case, we can use Earth (our sample of one) to look at the various humanoid species that once coexisted alongside modern humans (homo sapiens). These include: Neanderthals, Denisovans, Homo erectus, Homo floresiensis, and Homo naledi, among others. That’s roughly the same number of intelligent species we find on Aenya, and, unlike other fantasy settings, the humanoid species of Aenya mostly share a common ancestor. Bogren, horg, avians, and halfmen are all related to humans. The two exceptions are merquid and snake men, and snake men (the Septhera) aren’t native to Aenya; they’re aliens who invaded the planet.
That being said, who flippin’ cares? It’s fantasy, and fantasy is rife with improbable creatures like dragons and giants, who violate the square-cube law. But if the story is fun and the characters are likeable, the rest is just icing.
Funny you should say the wording in TFG is clumsy. I’d be interested in seeing an example of what you mean? I actually wrote TFG last, years after AoA and PoA, so maybe I am getting worse as a writer? I dunno, but TFG remains my best reviewed book to date. I will admit I was pushing myself there, dabbling with more stylistic prose.
You are correct about the orbital mechanics, but wrong about the story. Aenya orbits and is tidally-locked to the gas giant, Infinity, NOT the sun. I worked with an astronomer and an engineer to hammer out the details, but it probably isn’t perfect. There are too variables to consider: for instance, the new distance between the sun and Infinity, the temperature of the sun after changing into a new phase, the tidal forces impacting Aenya from the gas giant, etc.
But hey, it’s a heck of a lot more accurate than Star Wars, and unlike A Song of Ice and Fire, I at least make a stab at explaining irregular seasons without resorting to “it’s magic!”
Follow this link for a full explanation: https://www.nickalimonos.com/cosmology
Ecthros means ‘enemy’ — you are correct. I based him off a character my nephew created, and my nephew is named Xenophon, after the famous Athenian who led the Spartans out of Persia. Anyway, I thought it would be ironic, since the assassin in that book is called Eros, which means ‘romantic love.’
One area where I wholeheartedly agree with you, I do mention nudity too much in AoA, more than in Tarzan anyway. But in PoA it’s barely mentioned at all and in my current novel it is entirely non existent. I admit, I tried to imbue my work with a philosophical viewpoint but it didn’t work out.
Sorry if this all sounds defensive. I actually enjoy these kinds of messages. I like thinking about Aenya and readers like yourself challenge me to make it better.
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After posting that, I looked at your diagram of the orbit and saw that I had misunderstood some things, but I’m not sure if I’m getting everything right yet. Is infinity and the greater moon the same thing? And earth orbits infinity daily? So, if you were in the far west, you wouldn’t see infinity, just would have hot days and dark nights.
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Correct! Infinity is another name for The Greater Moon, because for the primitive people of Aenya, the moon is just “that thing up in the sky.” They do not understand that, technically, Aenya is a moon of Infinity. What you may find interesting, in my upcoming novel, The Magiq of Aenya, the protagonist, Lilliea, is an astronomer.
The orbit is “daily” for what passes for a day on Aenya. But yes, if you traveled far enough into the western hemisphere, you would not see the moon. This never happens in any of the books, however, because this part of Aenya is inhospitable due to extremely high temperatures, hence the moniker, “The Dead Zones.” You may recall, the furthest anyone has gone in that direction is Thelana, when she arrived at the ruins of the City of Shess in “The Serpent’s Eye.”
Hey, I know this is out of left field, but I just wanted to thank you for engaging with the actual story, and not the nudity aspect of it all — which is even more surprising given this is my nudist blog!
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Maybe the real reason I expressed some hesitation about the number of intelligent species is that the bogrens and horg kinda creep me out, especially when I think of how they must have evolved. That doesn’t mean you should have done anything different.
There were a few places your using more stylistic vocabulary felt a bit off to me when I read it, but I can’t find examples now. Overall it’s pretty good. I tend to criticize stories I like, ones that draw me to want to participate in the creative process. I hope it doesn’t come across as negative.
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Thank you for saying that (about the species creeping you out) that was sort of my intention. Although I still feel they may be underdeveloped. I have yet to write extensively about the dark hemisphere and the world the bogren and horg inhabit.
I understand your thought process now; I tend to do the same sometimes when I review a book. The negatives offer more to discuss, and then I find myself backtracking and telling my listeners, “but actually, I really enjoyed this one.”
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