Canby Herald Online

Author, author

• By: Peggy Savage  
• Published: 10/21/2009 10:59:41 AM

A young author
Anna Marine, 14, opens the first carton of her newly published book, "Miraculous Tragedy."

Anna Marine was in PE class when the idea for a good story first came to her. And then she wrote a novel.

“I thought, ‘This would make a cool story,’” she said. “I just intended it to be five pages, but it grew and grew.”

That was a scant nine months ago, when Anna was 13 and an eighth grader at Baker Prairie Middle School. Now a Canby High School freshman, she’s a published author.

Her 424 page book, “Miraculous Tragedy,” came out in print in early September. It is sold on the self-publishing Web site Wordclay.com and online through Amazon, Barnes and Noble and Powell’s Books. The author also has hard copies at home.

“The story started as a free-flowing idea,” she said. “I never planned for it to go anywhere — it all just kind of happened.”

Still, the book took seven months to write and the young author devoted all her free time to the effort.
 “I’d start writing at 6 p.m. and write until two in the morning,” she said. “I wrote as it came to me. The characters came alive. The characters decided for themselves what they would become.”

The daughter of Art and Angelina Marine, Anna is the middle child in a family of five, with siblings Alex Amelia, Alyzabeth, and Abigail.

Her mother said Anna’s ambition to write a novel came as a surprise to the entire family. 

“She told us, ‘I’m going to write a book,’ and we said, ‘Oh, OK,’ and then all of the sudden, she said, ‘I’m to page 400 so far.’ Then I realized she’s really going to do it. We are really proud of her.”

Considered young adult fiction, the book is part one of a trilogy, with vampires and teen pregnancy worked into the theme. As the characters cascade through the story, they find similar interests, and one is a love for music.

Music is worked into the framework of each chapter, every one of them based on a popular song. For the final chapter, the song is “Heaven Help Us” by the rock band My Chemical Romance. Not a surprising choice, considering the glowing remarks in Anna’s blog about the band, its leader Gerard Way, and his use of music as a way to resolve personal battles.

The book’s title may seem an oxymoron, but Anna was quick to explain the significance. “The story’s got a vampire in it,” she said. “I call it ‘Miraculous Tragedy’ because it’s based on a teenage pregnancy, which is a tragedy, but birth is such a miracle.”

The young author did a lot of research on pregnancy during the writing of her book and asked questions like “What were you like at 20 weeks?” her mother said.

Not surprisingly, the teenager has a healthy respect for books, which she said was instilled by her second grade teacher at Trost Elementary School, Tricia Griggs.

“I didn’t like to read and my teacher pushed me to read for fun,” Anna said. “She got me into fantasy with the first Harry Potter book. I owe my love of reading to her.”

Nine-year-old sister Abigail, piped in, “You should see her bookcase in her room, it’s filled to the top with books and I’m pretty sure she’s read every single one of them.”

It was another teacher, Lynda Roberts, who inspired Anna to start writing. “She was my humanities teacher at Baker Prairie, and she taught me everything I know about grammar and writing,” Anna said. “She was the best teacher I’ve ever had. She got me prepared for bigger things. She was a great inspiration.”

Now at Canby High, the teen plans to continue learning the craft by enrolling in creative writing classes.
“I hear they have a great writing program at my school, and I think there’s a creative writing club that I want to get involved in,” she said.

Asked if she would pursue a career in writing, Anna said, “I’m not sure. I love writing with a passion, but my real goal is to be a pediatric nurse or a midwife. I’ve been interested in that as long as I can remember.”

Still, Anna said, she finds writing to be an exhilarating experience. “When I’m writing, it’s a feeling of pure joy,” she said. “This is definitely the biggest project I’ve ever worked on. Seeing the book finished and put to paper and ink is so stupendous — a total miracle.”

To get the book into print, Anna used a self-publishing Web site which offered editing services, the ISBN number, copyright registration and other services.

“The book went to the publisher on August 1 — that’s a day I clicked on the ‘publish’ button on the Web site,” she said. “I received the first copies on Sept. 12, and there’s one signed copy at the middle school — I promised Mrs. Roberts that she could have the first signed copy.”

In some respects, Anna is now living the life of an author. Besides writing her books, she’s doing her own marketing. To network and promote the novel, she’s built a Web site at miraculoustradgedy.weebly.com. The site features tabs for her bio, a description of the book, a blog, a playlist, contact information and special offers.

Currently, Anna is hard at work on part two of the trilogy and has already come up with the ending for the third book. “I just woke up at midnight with the perfect ending,” she said.

Her dream is to write a series of three award-winning books before she turns 16.

“I hope that my trilogy, “Miraculous Tragedy”, “My Beautiful Death,” and “To The End” become worldwide bestsellers, and that maybe, one day they can even become popular enough to become a movie,” Anna wrote in her blog. “Maybe, I’ll keep aiming for that one, who knows?”
 

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