It all started as fanfiction.
Senior year of high school was when I started to embrace my inner geek. I had played some video games before this point and started delving into the world of YouTube, but senior year was when I really got geeky. I started reading manga, watched ARGs, and even participated in a cosplay prom. This was also the conception of fan fiction.
I had written fan fiction before, but never classified it as such until I was past high school. They were often self-insert stories about The 39 Clues series or about meeting my music idol, Adam Lambert, with some weird vampire nonsense thrown in there. When senior year hit, I was big into two franchises: Alien and Star Trek. Having wanted to be more creative and involved with either series, I started writing crossover fan fiction at the end of senior year. It involved my friends and myself being placed into this crossed and twisted hybrid universe, however that was only the beginning.
Upon entering college, I kept tabs on this story. I would read it to whomever I was dating at the time with such fire and passion in my eyes and voice, them ushering me to continue it. Whenever I got a new idea, I jotted it down, eventually forming a timeline. I soon realized this was becoming much larger than a simple piece of fanfiction. It was becoming its own world.
Soon I started saying: “It’s fanfiction, but I might turn it into its own thing eventually.” About halfway through writing the actual story, I began switching my mentality from fanfiction to science fiction. I developed my own species, names of stations and planets, and technologies. The entire book timeline was written out by the start of my junior year in college, when I was determined to weave this new universe into my honors capstone. All I had to do was just write the book.
I finished the rough draft the spring break of junior year. My mom and I were driving back from Maine, seeing my grandmother in the hospital. In hindsight, I wished I told my grammy about my book. She was also a writer, but we didn’t know at the time that would be the last time I’d see her when she was still conscious, she died a few months later.
Senior year was set with editing the story and fleshing out what would become part of my Honors Thesis – particularly five characters. The edits took a sideline when COVID happened and my thesis had to be completed. I didn’t pick up on editing until the summer going into my first year of graduate school. In the span of 3 days, I finished editing, made layout adjustments, got a book cover and published it on Amazon, only a mere week before classes started. I had a headache for those three days.
It still amazes me to this day that, at my age, while completing one of the most intensive majors I know of, I wrote a whole book with ideas for a trilogy, prequel/sequel novels and extended universe, and it all started from wanting to combine Star Trek and Alien into the same universe. It will always shock me how Project: SCORPIO came to be. It doesn’t feel real.
My only regret is not telling my grandmother. But I know she’s looking down at me, probably reading over my shoulder as I write. The first book was dedicated to her, and I’m excited to continue writing this series and share this new science fiction world with everyone.