Queer author, Marissa Alma Nick is set to release her debut novel, REBEL IN VENUS, on May 26 on Amazon.com.
Marissa Alma Nick illuminates queer experiences with an authentic perspective on emerging concerns including mental health, trauma, sexual assault, abuse and gaslighting. More than anything, it’s a book about empowerment, self-realization, self-acceptance and self-love – a coming-of-age story, about a woman who is realizing she can no longer outrun herself.
REBEL IN VENUS takes place over one ‘girl’s night in’ spent between best friends, Maria and Layla. Over the course of the witty and unexpected evening, Layla’s memory is jolted, and her once carefully repressed past begins to return to her, triggering a sequence of events that ultimately jeopardizes Layla’s unconventional life. In REBEL IN VENUS, the bold, and sometimes brutally honest stories that unfold, are filled with sexual revelations, high-school humiliations, unwanted pregnancies, unwavering friendships, sex work, divorce, and loss. As the confessions unfold, Layla’s anguished past starts to crystallize and challenges the strength of her friendship with Maria, as well as Layla’s own life. Will Layla learn to save herself in time? Or will her past win over her ability to see a future?
Marissa playfully blends literary genres, to bring to life the dynamic world that is Layla’s past, and present. And through Layla’s story, she points out how easy it is to wrap ourselves up in a cloak of shame, especially when we don’t yet understand why what we’re so ashamed of, or rather… that there isn’t anything to be ashamed of. Marissa expresses the power we hold in our vulnerability, and the strength we can find in expressing it.
What inspired her to write the book?
Marissa has always been known as a dancer/choreographer but on December 4 of 2019, while performing, she tore her meniscus and found out she would require surgery to repair it, and would be recovering for a full year putting her dancing career on hiatus. To make matters worse, on the first of the year 2020, her best friend tragically committed suicide. Then, two months later the world shut down with Covid 19. Marissa was sort of forced by life to sit down and write this book.
It was as if she was creating a lifeboat for herself, so she could give herself a sense of purpose to keep going and not give up in the face of these life-changing adversities.
REBEL IN VENUS is available on Amazon
