Nikki Tate: Hi. My name is Nikki Tate. I write under the name Nikki Tate, though that is not actually my real name. My real name was so boring, my last name being Williams, that I went digging through the family archives to find something a little bit more interesting and a little bit more literary. So I discovered that back in the midst of time, my family was related by marriage to William Wordsworth and one of my old family names was Stratton, so my full legal name is actually Nicole-Annette Tate-Stratton and I chose that name because of this literary connection. However, after having picked this awfully lengthy name, I realized it doesn't really fit on the cover of a book very well, so I wound up lofting off the Stratton part after all ... Even though that is my connection to the great writer and this is how I wound up with the short name, Nikki Tate.