Stories by @nickienicks

GEORGE ELIOT

In rigid Victorian England, a brilliant, unconventional woman abandons her name, reputation, and social standing to become George Eliot, one of literature’s most powerful voices - while secretly living the scandalous life that fuels her genius.

Pride & Prejudice

The whimsical tale of Lizzy Bennet and her loveable-if-eccentric family, as they navigate through tricky British social circles. Will Lizzy's father manage to marry off his five daughters, despite his wife's incessant nagging? And will Lizzy's beautiful sister Jane marry the handsome, wealthy Mr. Bingley, or will his brooding friend Mr. Darcy stand between their happiness?

Filthy Rich Fae

Set against the neon-lit, jazz-infused backdrop of a magical New Orleans underworld, FILTHY RICH FAE is a dark, high-stakes romantic fantasy thriller. Cate Holloway is a fiercely independent trauma nurse living by one strict rule: stay far away from the Gages, a lethal and obscenely wealthy crime family that secretly controls the city's supernatural elements. But when her reckless brother falls deep into debt with them, Cate is forced to confront the family's enigmatic and ruthless heir, Prince Lachlan Gage. Instead of demanding a cash repayment she can never afford, the chillingly beautiful fae prince proposes a sinister alternative: a thirty-day soul bargain that binds her directly to him.Plunged headfirst into a glamorous yet terrifying hidden world of rival courts, blood magic, and ancient grudges, Cate is thrust into the center of a deadly supernatural power struggle. As a human outsider navigating the treacherous politics of the magical elite, she must survive cutthroat court intrigue and the terrifying specter of the Wild Hunt. As the days tick down, the sharp, hostile tension between Cate and her captor morphs into a scorching, forbidden attraction. Lachlan represents everything she fears, yet his protective instincts and hidden depths become impossible to ignore. In a world where every glittering promise hides a lethal trap, Cate must discover if she can outsmart the immortal prince, or if surrendering her heart to a monster is the most dangerous gamble of all.

Vampire Academy (2028)

Dhampir Rosemarie "Rose" Hathaway and her best friend, Moroi princess Vasilissa "Lissa" Dragomir, who after two years on the run, have been brought back to their school, St. Vladimir's Academy. Rose and Lissa become caught in and must entangle themselves from forbidden romances and the Strigoi, evil and dangerous vampires who are set on turning Lissa into one of their own.

Dungeon Crawler Carl

The series follows Carl and his ex-girlfriend's cat, Princess Donut, two of the few survivors of the mining, transporting, processing, and consumption of Earth's resources by an alien corporation, as they are forced to compete in a dungeon crawl recreated from those resources for an intergalactic reality show program.

The Hunchback of Notre Dame

Set in the dark, disease-ridden mud of 1482 Paris, Robert Eggers and Craig Mazin’s Notre-Dame is a psychological gothic tragedy that strips away Disney’s theatricality to embrace the bleak reality of Victor Hugo’s text. Quasimodo (Griffin Santopietro) is a severely deformed 20-year-old youth kept hidden inside the unheated, echoing labyrinth of the cathedral by Archdeacon Claude Frollo (Vincent Cassel). Frollo is an aging, tyrannical judge weaponizing religious fanaticism to mask his own rotting moral core and toxic, repressed lust. Severely isolated, Quasimodo’s fracturing mind copes through vivid, terrifying hallucinations as the stone gargoyles warp into life—manifesting as the manic survival instinct Hugo (Oscar Isaac), the crushing weight of religious shame Victor (Brian Tyree Henry), and the weeping specter of maternal abandonment Laverne (Tilda Swinton).The fragile sanctuary of the church shatters when Esmeralda (Helin Kandemir), a fierce, hyper-vigilant Romani street survivor, flees into the cathedral. She finds unexpected allies in the ancient, compassionate Archdeacon (Bill Nighy) and Quasimodo himself, who experiences a radical awakening of empathy. Frollo launches a brutal, xenophobic purge of the city to claim her, deploying his heavily armored enforcers (Winston Duke and Seth Rogen) alongside the war-weary, PTSD-afflicted Captain Phoebus (Rudy Pankow). When Phoebus chooses his own rank over moral duty, it triggers a catastrophic guerrilla uprising led by Clopin (Danny Lee Wynter) from the Parisian underworld. As the slums storm the gates under a rain of molten lead, Quasimodo must physically and mentally battle his own inner stone demons to save Esmeralda from Frollo's gallows, culminating in a visceral, breathless climax atop the high towers that explores the true cost of isolation and institutional cruelty.

Nora Goes Off Script

A romantic comedy about Nora Hamilton, a romance screenwriter whose life is upended when her husband leaves her and she writes a hit script about their divorce, which gets made into a movie filming at her house. The film's star, Leo Vance, ends up staying with her and her kids, leading to an unexpected romance that challenges her formulaic view of love. The book is praised for being witty, heartfelt, and a fun escape, though some readers find the romance rushed.

The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Shy freshman Charlie is befriended by two outgoing senior students, who teach him about first love and friendship. However, as his friends prepare for college, Charlie must confront his troubled past.

Eternal Flame

Eternal Flame is a gripping four-part dramatic limited series that chronicles the meteoric rise and devastating collapse of the iconic 1980s band The Bangles. Framed through the shifting, often contradictory memories of its members, the series uncovers the raw reality behind the glossy MTV image. The story begins in the gritty 1981 Los Angeles "Paisley Underground" scene, where the Peterson sisters, Susanna Hoffs, and Annette Zilinskas forge a fierce, democratic pact to build a leaderless rock-and-roll democracy. Rebranded as The Bangles and joined by seasoned bassist Michael Steele, they conquer the underground club circuit with their raw garage-rock sound.However, when global pop deity Prince gifts them "Manic Monday" and major label executives at Columbia Records realize the camera's intense fixation on Susanna, the band’s egalitarian dream is pushed to the brink. Swept up in the corporate machinery of the late-'80s music industry, the women find their gritty artistic identity actively commodified, polished, and packaged into slick pop perfection. As massive commercial hits like "Walk Like an Egyptian" and "Eternal Flame" rocket them to global arena stardom, heavy-handed management and toxic media narratives aggressively isolate Susanna, branding the group as a singer and her backup band.Stretched to the absolute breaking point by relentless touring, exhaustion, and unaddressed creative friction, the band's internal sisterhood cracks. The tension culminates in a chaotic, legendary 1989 blowout concert on a literal slab of unfinished concrete at the Houston Beltway 8 freeway opening, where the group dramatically implodes. Rich in period detail, complex relationships, and authentic musicality, Eternal Flame strips away cheap '80s nostalgia to deliver a fierce, empathetic, and honest examination of systemic industry sexism, the high price of mega-stardom, and the tragic cost of creative compromise.

Atmosphere

Joan Goodwin, an aspiring astronaut, who navigates the grueling NASA space program in the 1980s, a hidden romance, and a catastrophic in-flight space crisis

The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm

Wilhelm (Jonathan Bailey) and Jacob Grimm (Nicholas Hoult) are writing a historical manuscript for a local duke (Stanley Tucci), but the project is late because Wilhelm spends his time gathering fairy tales. When Wilhelm drops part of the manuscript in a creek, he catches pneumonia while retrieving it. Near death, he dreams of various characters that want to be written - upon his recovery, a shaken Jacob agrees to work on a book of fairy tales with him, beginning the brothers' illustrious career.

A Tempest of Tea

A Tempest of Tea is a dark, stylized fantasy heist thriller directed by Park Chan-wook and written by Leigh Bardugo. Set in White Roaring, the gritty, gothic capital of the colonizing Ettenian Empire, the story follows Arthie Casimir (Avantika), a sharp seventeen-year-old criminal mastermind. By day, Arthie runs Spindrift, an upscale, elegant tea room catering to high society. By night, she flips a secret lever to transform it into an illegal, high-stakes bloodhouse for the city's hidden vampire underworld.When her beloved establishment is threatened with foreclosure by the ruthless Lady Linden (Courtney Ford), head of the capitalist Ettenia Joint Company, Arthie is forced to make a desperate deal with a wealthy elite contact, Penn Arundel (Dylan Kelly). To save her home, she must infiltrate the Athereum—the heavily guarded, impenetrable vampire palace—and steal an ancient, classified ledger that exposes the empire's darkest political secrets.To execute the impossible mission, Arthie assembles a ragtag crew of outcasts: her protective adopted brother and lethal marksman, Jin (Sean Lew); a proper but rebellious expert forge apprentice, Flick (Ava Telek); the brooding, aristocratic vampire Matteo (Jacopo Barzaghi); and a haunted vampire ally, Rose (Emilia Jones). Standing in their way are institutional gatekeepers Eleanore and Elise Thorne (Ashley Puzemis and Eloise Rakic-Platt), and Laith Sayaad (Adam Abbou), the fiercely dangerous, white-haired high captain of the Horned Guard who shares a tense, magnetic rivalry with Arthie.As the ticking-clock heist unfolds to a haunting, percussion-heavy gothic score by Ramin Djawadi, the crew must navigate blood-slicked ballrooms, deceptive political alliances, and deadly betrayals. Arthie soon realizes that they aren't just stealing a ledger—they are uncovering a massive, systemic conspiracy that could tear the empire apart and ignite a revolution.

Here’s the Story: Surviving Marcia Brady

The public saw her as America’s perfect, blonde sweetheart on The Brady Bunch, but behind the scenes, Maureen McCormick battled a harrowing, decades-long spiral of drug addiction, depression, and self-destruction before finding redemption.

Beautiful Creatures: The Official TV Mini-Series

This format expands the 2009 novel by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl into a rich, atmospheric 6-part gothic drama. It preserves the Southern Gothic mythology, ancestral curses, and complex character dynamics that were omitted from the 2013 film adaptation

Some Like It Hot

Godzilla: Cosmos Quest

When a mysterious cosmic signal broadcasts ancient philosophical riddles across the globe, Godzilla wakes up. Instead of destroying cities, he begins marching directly toward the magnetic North Pole, seemingly answering the call. A mismatched team of eccentric scholars, corporate visionaries, and chaotic tag-alongs chase the Titan across multiple continents, debating the meaning of life while dodging total destruction.

Jane Eyre

The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants

Four best friends - Lena Kaligaris, Tibby Rollins, Bridget Vreeland, and Carmen Lowell - prepare for their first summer apart before junior year of high school. Before separating, they discover a pair of thrift-store jeans that mysteriously fits each of their completely different body types perfectly. Believing the pants are magical, the girls create a pact to mail them to one another throughout the summer as a symbol of their friendship. In Santorini, shy Lena falls for Kostas, a local boy, while staying with her traditional grandparents. But after a misunderstanding sparks a bitter feud between their families, Lena must find the courage to defend him and confess her feelings. Back in Maryland, sarcastic aspiring filmmaker Tibby spends the summer working retail and unexpectedly befriends Bailey, a witty 12-year-old girl battling terminal leukemia. Bailey’s fearless outlook changes Tibby’s perspective on life and inspires her filmmaking. Meanwhile, Carmen visits her father in South Carolina, only to discover he has built a seemingly perfect new family with his fiancée and stepchildren. Feeling abandoned and out of place, Carmen lashes out before eventually reconciling with him through painful honesty. At a soccer camp in Baja California, impulsive Bridget pursues an older coach, Eric, hoping romance will fill the emotional void left by her mother’s death. When he gently rejects her, Bridget spirals emotionally until Lena comes to help her return home. By the end of the summer, the girls reunite forever changed. They realize the true magic was never in the traveling pants themselves, but in the unconditional love and support of their friendship as they navigate the challenges of growing up.

Moms Love Boy Bands

Celebrating their forty-fifth birthdays, four best friends escape to a tropical island for “Boy Bands at the Beach.” What could be better than basking in the sun, devouring beach reads, and being serenaded by the bands they idolized as teenagers? But when the story opens, we learn that each woman is at a crossroads. Nicole is at a boudoir photo shoot, desperate to recapture when she was the life of every party and not just a boring stay at home mom. Liliana, the overworked COO of a tech company, has missed dinner with her family again and must face her disappointed husband. Angie, the misfit of the group, is wrestling with a secret from the past. And Carly, a trendsetting influencer, is on social media, flaunting beach trip must-haves, even though she just caught her husband cheating. Enter Luca—a gorgeous, charismatic twenty-something year-old. When he befriends Angie, the others question why he’s at an event for women who get Botox injections and need sensible shoes. Suspicion escalates when someone steals Angie's passport. Then, the unthinkable happens when one friend vanishes. Will the others find her, or will a vacation to see the best nineties boy bands of all time end in disaster?

The Beneficiary

Jimmy Corrigan is a disgraced former investigator turned "Asset Recovery Specialist." From a sleek, glass-walled office in Midtown, he uses ethically gray hacking and social engineering to find distant relatives of billionaires who died intestate. He’s not above a little light forgery or "polishing" a client's family tree to ensure his 30% commission.