BANGS, Nina

PERSONAL:

Female. Education: Rutgers University, received degree in English literature. Hobbies and other interests: Horses and cats.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Texas. Agent—c/o Author Mail, St. Martin's Press, 175 Fifth Ave., New York, NY 10027.

CAREER:

Author. Has worked as an elementary school teacher for over twenty years.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Dorothy Parker Award of Excellence Reviewer Choice Award, Reviewers International Organization, 2001, PRISM finalist, 2002, and Paranormal Excellence Award for Romantic Literature nomination, Romantic Times, all for The Pleasure Master.

WRITINGS:

ROMANCE FICTION

An Original Sin, Love Spell (New York, NY), 1999.

(With Madeline Baker, Ann Lawrence, and Kathleen Nance) Paradise, Leisure Books (New York, NY), 1999.

(With Lisa Cach, Thea Devine, and Penelope Neri) Seduction by Chocolate, Leisure Books (New York, NY), 2000.

(With Claudia Dain and Shirl Henke) Unwrapped (includes Bangs' "Man with a Golden Bow"), Love Spell (New York, NY), 2000.

The Pleasure Master, Love Spell (New York, NY), 2001.

(With Jenelle Denison and Erin McCarthy) Men at Work, Berkeley Publishing Group (New York, NY), 2001.

Night Games, Love Spell (New York, NY), 2002.

From Boardwalk with Love, Love Spell (New York, NY), 2003.

(With Cheryl Holt, Kimberly Raye, and Patricia Ryan) Burning Up: Four Novellas of Erotic Romance (includes Bangs' "The Flame"), St. Martin's (New York, NY), 2003.

Master of Ecstasy, Dorchester (New York, NY), 2004.

SIDELIGHTS:

Nina Bangs is a grade-school teacher turned author who writes over-the-top romance novels involving science fiction and horror elements such as time travel and vampires. The female leads are often sexually unsatisfied women who find fulfillment in their unlikely encounters with men from the future or the past, either through time travel or in stories that are set in alternate times. In Bangs's debut novel, An Original Sin, Fortune MacDonald lives in the year 2300, when the male gender has become extinct. She finds herself transported back 300 years to the state of Texas, where she meets, oddly enough, a Scottish man named Leith who has been transported forward in time from the year 1700.

In another time-travel adventure, The Pleasure Master, a hairdresser named Kathy Bartlett finds herself in 1542 Scotland, where she becomes the object of a competition between three brothers who wish to hold the title of Pleasure Master.

In Night Games, Brian Byrne is from the year 2502, where sex has become a spectator sport performed in large arenas and broadcast to the world. When Brian decides to go on a vacation to 2002 Ireland, he meets a woman named Ally who has endured an unhappy marriage and is now writing a book about finding sexual satisfaction as a single woman.

Depending on how much of the premise they could believe, critics have both praised and ridiculed Bangs's time-travel books. On the Web site Romance Reader, for example, reviewer Kerry Keating was somewhat repulsed by the concept of a future in which sex is a spectator sport: "While it is obvious to me that the premise of Night Games is meant to be tongue-in-cheek," she wrote, "I couldn't get over the whole 'sex as sport' idea." On the other hand, Kathy Boswell, writing for Sensual Romance Reviews online, attested that she has "never been so glued to a book as I was to this one." In a Romance Reader review of The Pleasure Master, Cathy Sova had reservations about the many varying plot elements in the story, but concluded that the novel may satisfy "readers who are looking for something way beyond different."

In addition to time travel plot devices, Bangs, who knowingly introduces strange ideas into her romances, often for satirical effect, has also written a story about a woman from the future venturing into the past and meeting a vampire in Master of Ecstasy. In From Boardwalk with Love, she spoofs spy thrillers with an extra dash of sex and humorous scenes. In the latter story, Camryn O'Brian works for an agency called B.L.I.S.S. On an assignment to protect a wealthy man from assassination by an agent from the League of Violent Economic Revolutionaries (L.O.V.E.R.), Camryn travels to an island that is an oversized replica of the game Monopoly. There she falls in love with a millionaire's son, Jace. However, Camryn possesses a secret power that is dangerous to any man who tries to protect her. While Romance Reader critic Joni Richards Bodart noted that From Boardwalk with Love is an obvious satire of the James Bond spy thrillers, she found it annoying that Camryn is "an incompetent secret agent who can't shoot, has the ultimate weapon that almost never does what it's supposed to, and constantly has to be rescued from her mistakes." Nevertheless, the reviewer concluded that this spoof would be a "treat" for those who like Bond satires.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, February 1, 2003, John Charles, "B.L.I.S.S.ed Out!," p. 977; February 1, 2004, John Charles, review of Master of Ecstasy, p. 954.

ONLINE

All about Romance,http://www.likesbooks.com/ (November 8, 2003), Heidi L. Haglin, review of From Boardwalk with Love; Lori-Anne Cohen, review of An Original Sin; Jennifer Keirans, review of The Pleasure Master.

Nina Bangs Home Page,http://www.ninabangs.com/ (June 16, 2004).

Readers Read,http://www.readersread.com/ (November 8, 2003), review of The Pleasure Master.

Romance and Friends,http://www.romanceandfriends.com/ (May, 2001), Carla Hosom, review of The Pleasure Master.

Romance Reader,http://www.theromancereader.com/ (June 16, 2004), Joni Richards Bodart, review of From Boardwalk with Love; Diana Burrell, review of An Original Sin; Cathy Sova, review of The Pleasure Master; Kerry Keating, review of Night Games.

Sensual Romance Reader,http://sr.thebestreviews.com/ (August 22, 2001), Leslie Tramposch, review of An Original Sin; (November 11, 2002), Harriet Klausner, review of Night Games; (May 15, 2002), Kathy Boswell, review of Night Games; (March 27, 2003), Brenda Horner, "Three Contemporary Christmas Love Stories."*