For 18-year-old Hayley, the wounds from her friend’s death were still fresh. At night, the grief flooded her dreams: “I floated high above the ground, so gravity couldn’t hold me down. One day I drifted up into the clouds and I discovered an abandoned kingdom. I was not welcome. I wandered away from the castle and the light it provided.”
Olivia Vetrano ’17 created those words, and Hayley as the main character of her novel, “Neverland.” In it, the high-school senior finds ways to cope with grief, often times in this other world.
“Hayley relies on thoughts of glimmering kingdom lights and enchanted tea parties as the only way to dull the flashbacks and insecurities to decrease the pain from losing loved ones and facing tragedies,” says Olivia.
Olivia began writing “Neverland” as a high-schooler herself, as a sort of “productive diary” to “push herself forward.” She carried out the story at Geneseo, often times writing at the gazebo as the sun set on crisp fall nights — and in just about every building on campus. she says.
Now, it has been published by Amazon’s Kindle Scout, a reader-powered site that allows online readers to vote for which submitted writings should be published.
Olivia submitted a sample of her novel and readers voted to have Amazon’s Kindle Press publish it in full.
“Being published at such a young age is truly the most surreal feeling and I am so lucky,” says Olivia. “I sat down and started to write the novel into something I could always fall back on when I couldn't see clearly, but it turned into something much more real.”
She didn’t really have expectations for the book, and had little outside training in novel writing. The fact that her novel outperformed thousands of other unpublished authors has sparked a passion within Olivia to create more stories for others to enjoy.
“Even at 20, with no connections to the publishing world, I was able to share my reality to world,” says Olivia.
This momentum is what Olivia hopes will catapult her career. “I would love to be a novelist, but I understand that will be way in the future,” she says. Right now, she’s set on earning a doctorate or master’s degree in children's and young adult literature, and working in in the publishing industry.
While the novel is mostly fiction, Olivia draws on her own experiences — and how she gets through the tough times. She included a great deal of dialogue concerning her own experience with eating disorders. “I wrote this to take control of my own situation,” says Olivia.
Struggles to Olivia are “blurry,” in that they are different to each individual. Her time spent in an eating disorder facility taught her that “Everybody’s obstacles are completely different, we all battle our own demons, and you cannot compare one person to the next.” Olivia hopes “Neverland” can offer individuals ideas and hope that they can overcome challenges using their own tactics.
Last fall, Olivia held a book signing at the Big Tree Inn as part of the annual Wine Stroll event. As of February, Neverland has sold 500 copies online and about 100 in print.
Now in her final semester at Geneseo, Olivia is also 30,000 words into her next novel.
— By Kitrick McCoy '19