When I was seven, I closed the Harry Potter book for the first time. I ran my hands over the patterned cover and traced the little figure on a broom. Like many kids, I was instantly captivated by the multi-dimensional, magical world that J.K. Rowling crafted with each sentence. Rowling had the rare ability to bring her characters to life so that I felt as though I had made new friends in Harry and the gang. I fell in love right then with the idea that a person could be completely transported into a book. Sitting on the floor and clutching the book in my chest, I knew that I wanted to write something that would move my readers so completely that opening my book was like opening a black hole, sucking them in; making them fall in love, too. My sophomore year of high school, I was given an assignment that inadvertently reignited this old desire. As an introduction to my new teacher, I was to write a 273 page autobiography. I chose to write about the process of penning my very first bestseller-- an adventure for kids and teens with a young girl as the primary protagonist. The essay contained a description of how this hero sprung up from my mind like Athena along with an insert from my “first novel” in which she faced a deadly foe only she could defeat, deep in the catacombs of Paris. After turning my essay in however, I found I couldn’t shake the story of strong, saucy Olivia and her fantastic adventures, so I started from the beginning. The story had a life of its own and soon I had a whole book’s worth of words. When I had finished, though, I struggled with what to do with Olivia’s story. It seemed to me, there was little point in writing it all down if it didn’t reach an audience to connect with or move. A creative friend of mine recommended I publish it online, via a website that allows young readers and writers to connect. My first published draft, full of cliches and predictable twists garnered 19,300 readers, and 720 critics within a handful of weeks. I was more than a little shocked-- this was only supposed to be an experiment of sorts; I had written it more for myself than anything else. The positive responses were overwhelming to me; I was somehow both reassured in their by the audiences' love for my words and also paralyzed by the idea of so many pairs of eyes in my private world. Over the years, I had often wondered how 26 letters and a handful of punctuation had the power to move people. But when I was given the chance to move others, I foun