Alex Nieora is not your average mommy blogger. Rather than hogging online mommy forums like Delphi or Mumsnet with her family life woes she prefers to scribble and inform on her favorite subject: cop dramas!
Originally from Santa Clarita, CA, Alex has travelled extensively, and has also experienced life in Coimbra, Portugal, and London, England. She lives with her family – husband Peter, and two young kids. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in English from UCLA.
Alex first became passionate about crime (watching not participating!) when she first met the production team of CSI on the street when the show was filming in her hometown, SC. Alex also enjoys How to Get Away with Murder and The Mentalist. She loves crime television so much that she decided to start blogging about it.
Alex Nieora also likes English crime dramas like Morse, Lewis, Endeavor, Whitechapel, and Midsomer Murders. To be fair, who can fail to fall in love with quaint English villages and towns and cities with tons of character and history. And when her husband’s job was relocated to the UK, naturally the family moved over as well, and Alex took the opportunity to visit some of the set locations while there.
Alex hopes to have her own award-winning crime television show someday. In fact, she us tells has already been busy on developing characters and script-writing episodes. Infuriatingly, she won’t give us any details.
When she isn’t writing, Alex Nieora can usually be found working in her garden, running, spending time with her family, or watching the newest crime drama of course!
In the last few years, what lifestyle, habit or behavior change has had the biggest positive impact on your life?
Have you ever seen the movie Throw Mama from the Train? It’s a comedic crime movie and in it, the main character, a creative writing teacher says, “A writer writes, always,” and that really sticks with me. I write something every single day, even if it’s just a journal entry or jotting down a little idea on my notepad. I even carry a notepad around with me everywhere I go because. You just never know when inspiration will spark! It is important to be ready.
When you feel unfocused, what do you do?
It might seem counter-productive, but I’ll go for a walk. I become unfocused when I am stressed or busy with chores and paperwork. So, going for a walk lets me unwind and refocus. I love the outdoors; I spend hours gardening – the fresh air does wonders. And – if you walk anywhere the best place is a wood. It’s an oxygen banquet. Sometimes I also put on my jogging gear and go for a short run. The endorphins help me stay more focused when I return to my desk.
What advice would you give to a smart and ambitious recent college graduate? And what advice should they ignore?
Don’t take a job just to take a job. When I graduated, I took a customer service job just because I needed the work. I was miserable with the structured nature the limitations of the position. By the time the day was over, I was too exhausted to focus on my own personal projects. I did that for nearly six months before I had enough. I turned to freelance and personal writing and I really haven’t looked back since. When it comes to advice a new graduate should ignore, I would say to ignore the notion that you shouldn’t pursue work-life balance. Don’t kill yourself for a job where they would replace you tomorrow. If your employer doesn’t care about your work-life balance, they don’t care about you in general.
What is one lifestyle trend that excites you?
Wearable exercise technology devices! My husband got me an Apple Watch not too long ago. At first, I wondered why he would get me something like that because to me it just wasn’t practical. But then I started using to it track my runs and my sleep and it really put things into perspective for me. My runs were lucrative, but when it came to my sleep, I found I was only getting six hours a night.
With or without naming names (whichever you’d prefer), who has been the biggest influence in your life and why?
Growing up I read a lot of Agatha Christie. Her murder mystery novels were so enthralling that they are ultimately what led me to pursue my education and now to pursue a writing career. Agatha Christie really set the stage for mystery writers everywhere, and she is an inspiration for women. I’ve always looked up to her legacy.
What’s one of the biggest life lessons you’ve learned?
I’ve learned to pay attention to my own narrative and my own goals. Ignore negative people who try to discredit you. As long as you are happy, that is all that matters. To put it another way, don’t listen to the haters. I think everyone learns this lesson as they get older. But for some it comes too late, and that is a tragedy. My parents and friends weren’t happy when I moved abroad with my family. But it inspired me and gave me insights I would not have ever gained otherwise.
How do you stay motivated?
I do what I love doing. Keeping up with the newest trends in crime drama and latest media is what motivates me to keep writing and to keep at it. There are constantly new television series and trends coming up and if I want to stay ahead of the curve, I must keep up to date. The latest craze, however, is the arrival of different docu-series that profile real cases. These particularly excite me – for some reason it’s more thrilling when you know it actually happened. Everyone is gobbling those up. So, my newest idea has been a crime drama that is mostly fictional but has nods to factual cases throughout history. But I’m not giving away anymore.
What legacy do you hope to leave behind?
Well, hoping to be the next Agatha Christie is a little bit too much to ask. I just want to create something that people will look back on 50 years from now. I want to write a television crime drama that people everywhere will enjoy and remember. So… it’s going to be a bit different… but beyond that I am staying schtum.