East Greenwich High Grad Writes First Novel and Launches Adventure into E-Publishing

EAST GREENWICH, RI — Cayla Keenan, of East Greenwich, is living the American Dream by writing the Great American Young Adult Novel.

Catching Stars is her first novel, although she's been writing stories pretty much all along. The idea came to her in a philosophy class at Fordham University, where she's attending college.

Full confession, she laughed, she was daydreaming in philosophy class. The professor was droning on about German philosopher Immanuel Kant.

"Not really a fan," she said, of Kant. "He needed to get out more."

Keenan's book isn't exactly a philosophical novel in the tradition of Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain, for example. But the class did provide the inspiration.

"The class was the vehicle," she said. "It's a fun story," which she described as a "full fantasy world." It has bits of its own language, which she adapted from Arabic and Middle English. The story also has "political undertones," touching on racism and xenophobia. Even fantasies "have an obligation to mirror" the real world situation, she added. So there are themes that relate to contemporary life, even though the story is a fantasy.

Asked how she managed to create the effect of a special language, she said she took certain words from Middle English and Arabic and echoed turns of phrase and sentence structures.

The story revolves around two characters. Maddix Kell, a Middle English guard, is framed for murder. He falls in with a witch, who can save him.

"They go from bitter enemies to caring about each other," she said. The story came to her almost completely imagined in that class, she said.

She wrote the book in three months. It's 325 pages.

"It's the longest thing I've ever written and in the shortest time," she said.

Now, Keenan's jumping into authorship and doing it 21st-century style by attempting to publish on the crowdfunding website, Inkshares.

She did try to go the regular publishing route by sending the manuscript out to agents. She collected a few rejection slips and after giving it a fair shot, she decided to look for other options.

She even thought about self-publishing, but it didn't seem practical.

"When you're self-publishing, you don't even know if you have an audience," she said. "Through this site, publication is based on reader interest, and if a book gets enough pre-orders, it is published," she said. "In a little over a week, I have reached 116 pre-orders, almost half of my light goal of 250. The full-publishing goal is 750, so I am trying to get as much exposure as possible."

She was up to 236 pre-orders a couple of weeks ago.

Keenan hopes to keep writing, but she's also planning on law school after college. Meanwhile, her teachers at East Greenwich High have seen previews of the book and given her some helpful comments, she said.