You haven’t heard of Nycolette Blanks, unless you’re one of her relatives still in Syracuse, one of her clients in Valley Forge, Pa., or one of the 300 people who has bought her first published book.

Heck, Google hasn’t even heard of her. Her name, even without confining parenthesis surrounding it, yields zero results on the mega Internet super search. Zero results on Google! Even the gibberish ‘jkfdas’ yielded four results. But Nycolette Blanks? Comes up blank.

If Google doesn’t know her, really, what chance do you have?

So the Syracuse native returned Saturday, trying to advertise herself. Her new book is called ‘Is It Still There?’ It’s about a woman named Navia, who, as she struggles through life, finds increased reliance on God.

Why should you care about Blanks? Well, for starters, her own story stirs as much interest as any of her published (or unpublished) works.

She’s a Syracusian, too. She attended Holy Rosary Catholic elementary school over on Bellevue Street. Her mom owned a salon on Salina Street back in the ’80s. Aunt Lessie Newton still works housekeeping at SU. At 12, Blanks moved to Long Island, and eventually took her two passions (psychology and fashion), merged them into one enterprise and published her first book.

On Saturday, she returned to Southside Newsstand, which sold 50 of her books as she autographed for a few passersby.

Blanks, 32, is a full-time hair-salon owner (cleverly fusing her two aforementioned passions) in Valley Forge.

‘Thank you for your support. May God bless,’ she signs for one person on her book’s inside cover.

She describes the book as religious fiction interjected with hip-hop. Navia’s ex-boyfriend, Christian, is a former NFL player, her husband, Avon, is an architect and her best friend, Semaj, is a pop singer.

Like her characters, Blanks pursues a hodgepodge of interests. Besides her first novel – a four-year excursion – Blanks acts, directs, sings, writes and, yes … owns a salon.

When she returned Sunday to Valley Forge, she took one of her girls downtown. (She mentors, too!) They shot a film on the Art Museum steps Rocky made famous. The girl Blanks mentors submitted a video to the America’s Top Model competition.

‘I want to do everything,’ Blanks says. ‘Movies. I would love to see my (book) characters come to life.’

Her current project, a movie, is called, ‘Bills, Bills, Bills,’ and is astonishingly about struggling to pay bills.

In life, she plays the struggling artist, endeavoring to net her book in one of the two main mega-bookstores: Borders or Barnes & Noble.

‘Yes, that is definitely the toughest part,’ she says. ‘When you’re an unknown writer, people don’t know enough about you to give you a chance.’

Southside Newsstand, the only place in Syracuse where her book is sold, won’t give her the exposure she wants. The South Salina Street hole-in-the-wall lays camouflaged in a decaying strip mall.

She hopes she’ll earn a shelf life at a megastore soon.

‘To get into the big bookstores, you need a literary agent,’ she says. ‘And to get a literary agent, you need to have already had a book published, pretty much. It’s like a circle.’

At the local Valley Forge Barnes & Noble, she succeeded – and all the books sold out. At South Side Newsstand – whose owner, Carol Petty, is a Blanks family friend – the small stock quickly diminished.

‘I got to work more closely with the book,’ Blanks said. ‘So working with a smaller publishing group (LeTay Publishing) was still good.

Indeed, since November 2004, while struggling to earn shelf time, Blanks’ book has done relatively well; even if Google doesn’t know who she is.

Published on February 7, 2005 at 12:00 pm