About the Author
I started writing Lottie Niffumevol in July of 2011. It took me 1 year and 4 months to write, so I finished it on November 11th, 2012. While writing it, I intended on making the book into a series, which was meant to consist of multiple books following Lottie and her friends into adulthood.
After finishing the first novel, I tried to start writing the second, and ended up writing three or four different versions before deciding to put it off until I had enough real-life experience to write it. (The characters were entering high school, and I was still in elementary school, so I had trouble imagining what high school life was like. I was told to write what I knew, so I decided to wait until I could do that.) However, when I entered high school, I started focusing more on school, and stopped writing.
In 2015, I was inspired with a new book idea after listening to a song I loved. I bought a notebook to write my writing ideas in.
After reading the novel Lord of the Flies in my English class, which is about a group of boys who lose their minds when stranded on an island, I was inspired with an idea to write about a teen boy who had been left alone on an island and was now visiting therapy. The idea was that the island that he had been living on didn't compare in danger to the inland, or his mind. I chose to change this idea to a teen boy who had been stranded on an island as a child.
I decided to start writing that idea as a novel that summer, but only got 8 pages in. In 2017, I took a writer's craft class, so for my assignments, I revisited this idea and added more to it.
2015 was also an important year for me in terms of my dreams, since I began thinking about publishing Lottie Niffumevol again. After I finished the manuscript, I used to re-watch a YouTube video about preparing a manuscript for publishing, imagining about doing that with my own. But, I decided against it because I didn't want to risk being rejected. Both the physical copy of the book (unbound pages) and the digital file sat.
I saw a highway billboard in 2015 advertising a book-printing website. Upon visiting it, it sounded like exactly what I wanted in terms of publishing: not having to deal with editors wanting to change my work, or being the owner of leftover rights, since a traditional publishing company would control my cover, where the book was distributed, and if it got turned into a movie. I would be like a backup person in terms of decision-making. Plus, I would be under a contract with writing deadlines. The book-printing website advertised myself having total control over publishing.
Once again, I would always visit the website, imagining about using it to publish my novel. In the summer of 2016, I decided to email the company. I used both of the email addresses provided but never got a reply. Upon calling the phone number after-hours, the name of the company whose answering machine I'd reached was a completely different company than the one on the website. I thought that the book-printing company had gone out of business.
During the school year of 2016-17, I thought about publishing my book, but also hesitated, because I wasn't sure if I wanted my life to change.
After graduating high school, I decided that during my year of working, which I am currently in, that I would publish my book, to hopefully find passion in selling it as my own business, and maybe figure out what I wanted to study at the post-secondary level.
This summer, I started to write what was supposed to be the third novel in the Lottie series.
After finishing the first novel, I tried to start writing the second, and ended up writing three or four different versions before deciding to put it off until I had enough real-life experience to write it. (The characters were entering high school, and I was still in elementary school, so I had trouble imagining what high school life was like. I was told to write what I knew, so I decided to wait until I could do that.) However, when I entered high school, I started focusing more on school, and stopped writing.
In 2015, I was inspired with a new book idea after listening to a song I loved. I bought a notebook to write my writing ideas in.
After reading the novel Lord of the Flies in my English class, which is about a group of boys who lose their minds when stranded on an island, I was inspired with an idea to write about a teen boy who had been left alone on an island and was now visiting therapy. The idea was that the island that he had been living on didn't compare in danger to the inland, or his mind. I chose to change this idea to a teen boy who had been stranded on an island as a child.
I decided to start writing that idea as a novel that summer, but only got 8 pages in. In 2017, I took a writer's craft class, so for my assignments, I revisited this idea and added more to it.
2015 was also an important year for me in terms of my dreams, since I began thinking about publishing Lottie Niffumevol again. After I finished the manuscript, I used to re-watch a YouTube video about preparing a manuscript for publishing, imagining about doing that with my own. But, I decided against it because I didn't want to risk being rejected. Both the physical copy of the book (unbound pages) and the digital file sat.
I saw a highway billboard in 2015 advertising a book-printing website. Upon visiting it, it sounded like exactly what I wanted in terms of publishing: not having to deal with editors wanting to change my work, or being the owner of leftover rights, since a traditional publishing company would control my cover, where the book was distributed, and if it got turned into a movie. I would be like a backup person in terms of decision-making. Plus, I would be under a contract with writing deadlines. The book-printing website advertised myself having total control over publishing.
Once again, I would always visit the website, imagining about using it to publish my novel. In the summer of 2016, I decided to email the company. I used both of the email addresses provided but never got a reply. Upon calling the phone number after-hours, the name of the company whose answering machine I'd reached was a completely different company than the one on the website. I thought that the book-printing company had gone out of business.
During the school year of 2016-17, I thought about publishing my book, but also hesitated, because I wasn't sure if I wanted my life to change.
After graduating high school, I decided that during my year of working, which I am currently in, that I would publish my book, to hopefully find passion in selling it as my own business, and maybe figure out what I wanted to study at the post-secondary level.
This summer, I started to write what was supposed to be the third novel in the Lottie series.
2018 Update
In February of 2018, I decided to finish writing and to publish Lottie Niffumevol at Hidielle High, which was meant to be and is the second installment of the Lottie series. By this point, I had already been writing the third book for seven months and knew that I wanted to publish it upon completion. However, I needed to release the second installment first, which had been abandoned, in order for readers to understand the current plot in book three. I was originally intending on releasing it almost 2 months later, since I didn't think it would take me long to compile the many versions of the story that existed into one multi-part collection, in which readers would be able to see all of the different plot variations I had considered. But, I then chose to make these versions into one single story, condensing them, after the suggestion that multiple versions of the same installment would be too confusing for the reader to follow.
I then had to combine similar versions, along with the other sections, into one book. It took me longer than expected to copy all of the variations into one file, then fuse them into individual scenes. I also had to write the ending. I had already imagined years before scenes that I wanted to include, but it was necessary to add "in-between content" as well, so that I could include the necessary plot items to lead to book three and not just jump from the beginning to the end of the book.
After I wrote the ending, I was relieved that it had been written - but now I had to combine the content from the variations, and edit the manuscript after that. I spent hours changing the way sentences were written, considering whether they actually needed to be changed - changing some back, lots of others with compromise - and making sure the combined scenes didn't lose the right content. In addition, I formatted the manuscript for publishing, got an ISBN and copyrighted it, all the while completing the front and back covers (I designed a rough copy of the front cover when I was 13).
I hope readers will be excited to know that I have been writing the third book for a year, and that the writing quality will be my best yet. Also, I just started to continue to write Misdiagnosis, a book separate from the Lottie series that I started in 2015, and added to in 2017.
I then had to combine similar versions, along with the other sections, into one book. It took me longer than expected to copy all of the variations into one file, then fuse them into individual scenes. I also had to write the ending. I had already imagined years before scenes that I wanted to include, but it was necessary to add "in-between content" as well, so that I could include the necessary plot items to lead to book three and not just jump from the beginning to the end of the book.
After I wrote the ending, I was relieved that it had been written - but now I had to combine the content from the variations, and edit the manuscript after that. I spent hours changing the way sentences were written, considering whether they actually needed to be changed - changing some back, lots of others with compromise - and making sure the combined scenes didn't lose the right content. In addition, I formatted the manuscript for publishing, got an ISBN and copyrighted it, all the while completing the front and back covers (I designed a rough copy of the front cover when I was 13).
I hope readers will be excited to know that I have been writing the third book for a year, and that the writing quality will be my best yet. Also, I just started to continue to write Misdiagnosis, a book separate from the Lottie series that I started in 2015, and added to in 2017.