Not many people can say they’ve written and published a book in high school, but junior Kelli Dekutowski can. She had published an E-book, which can be put on a Kindle, called Civilization Dying. Dekutowski’s book is actually six short stories revolving around one main event.
Before actually writng her book, Dekutowski brainstormed for a while; thinking about the endless possibilities of plots she could use to start creating her stories, she decided that the genre of her book would be science fiction. “The book is about an alternate reality in the near future where an apocalypse occurs as a result of nuclear warfare, and the book, after giving a general overlook in the first story, then follows individual lives in the aftermath of the tragedies,” Dekutowski said.
Dekutowski knew that attempting to re-write history could go bad, so she decided to travel into the future and create her six short stories from there. “I had first thought about what would happen if the Cuban Missile Crisis had gone awry, and then I figured it would be easier to apply it to modern day society and go from into the near future rather than try to rewrite the past; even a past so recent as the 1960s,” she said.
While it may take others quite some time to pull ideas and plot lines, it didn’t take Dekutowski longer than a semester setting up her book; mainly because this was her honors English semester project. “The actual writing process took me a month. The planning, character developments and the plot developments took a good semester.”
Despite the trials and tribulations that comes along with writing, Dekutowski said she enjoys just about everything about it that writing has to offer. She knows what people want to read, and Dekutowski knows that she’s got to keep the readers alert throughout the book so they won’t set it down. “I think the most difficult part was trying to make it real, that people would be able to relate to these characters and these situations and be able to understand what was going on.”
Dekutowski plans to continue with her writing, and she also would like to publish another book, but this time a paperback. Continuing to use the science fiction genre, Dekutowski said she enjoys creating futuristic story plots. “I’m working on a novel right now for ALPHA (the talented and gifted program at the high school), which will be a science fiction time traveling story involving Jack the Ripper and the end of the universe. I hope to publish that around April and May, hopefully in paperback.”
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