Chat with VCNB employee Nicole Scott and you can easily see that her life philosophy is summed up in the dedication of her new book. The dedication of “Replacing Angels: When The Smoke Clears” was written to her children: “May you always aim high, stand strong, dream big and live every day with purpose.”

VCNB employee Nicole Scott holds up her new book “Replacing Angels: When The Smoke Clears.” It is available for purchase on Amazon and twenty percent of the profits on each book sold in September 2017 will be donated to a VCNB coworker who recently suffered a house fire. 

Nicole has been with the VCNB Financial Family for almost nine years, working most of that time in the bank’s Operations Department. Hustling behind the scenes with a focus on IRA and HSA administration, Nicole has endeared herself to many coworkers with her professional expertise and true passion for life. What many people don’t know is that she is a talented writer devoted to telling a meaningful story.

Nicole said that she writes to inspire people. “This is a story about loss and love and how it’s possible to rebuild and move on even after we have faced the worst. Most of us, in our lives, have been in a place where we thought we couldn’t get up and keep going. I know I certainly have,” Nicole explained. “As corny as it sounds, I think love makes all things possible.”

The journey to publishing this book was a long one. She began writing in 2012, just a year after publishing “Intuition,” a novel aimed at a teenage female reader. “I started writing this one for a somewhat older female reader, hoping to create something that would make the reader feel something.”

She wrote about three fourths of the book before life got in the way of finishing it. The mother of three said that she left it for a period of years. During that time, Nicole’s family experienced a series of tragedies including an accident that left Nicole’s own well-being in the balance. With an uncertain prognosis and too much time to think, she contemplated all the things she hadn’t done with her life.

Finishing the book was on that bucket list.

While still healing from surgery, Nicole set to work finishing her book. “I had a much deeper grasp of loss and grief. I had a better sense of who I am and what I most wanted to communicate.”

It was published in August, just one day before another member of the VCNB family lost his home to fire. Nicole saw the aftermath of the fire and has felt drawn to help this coworker who she holds in high regard.

That’s why, through the month of September, she has committed to donate twenty percent of the proceeds of every book she sells to this coworker who is recovering from his own loss. “It’s just a terrible thing to suffer through and I want to help in any small way that I can,” she said. “You spend so much time with your work family. I definitely think of the VCNB family as my own. That probably sounds silly to some people but I think that’s the way it should be. And the VCNB family has been good to me over the years. I want to do this for someone else.”

Nicole says she has a lot to be thankful for and is excited to soon begin a new role with the bank family. She is now training to be a Retail Banker and expects to shortly be working at our Friendly Bremen Banking Center in Bremen.

Find Nicole’s book “Replacing Angels: When The Smoke Clears” on Amazon.