The Stories That Built Me

“Life is pain, anyone who says otherwise is obviously selling something!" — The Princess Bride William Goldman, 1973

Stories found me early.

Looking back now, I think books were teaching me how to survive long before I realized that’s what they were doing.

Some taught me imagination. Some taught me grief. Some taught me sarcasm, resilience, longing, friendship, or how dangerous power can become in the wrong hands.

The stories that stayed with me weren’t the ones pretending life was easy. They were the ones that understood pain, hope, loneliness, and the strange complicated mess of being human.

And somewhere along the way, those stories quietly helped shape the person—and eventually the writer—I would become.

People always ask writers what inspired them to write. Usually they expect one neat answer. One author. One lightning strike moment where everything suddenly clicked into place. My writer’s journey looks less like one defining moment and more like a thousand little paper cuts from library books.

Some stories entertained me. Some devastated me. Some taught me humor, grief, worldbuilding, emotional honesty, or sarcasm as a coping mechanism. Some of them probably rewired my brain chemistry permanently.

Somewhere along the way, all of those stories stitched themselves together into The Chronicles of Fate.

“Words are, in my not-so-humble opinion, our most inexhaustible source of magic. Capable of both inflicting injury, and remedying it.” — Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows J.K. Rowling, 2007

I first read Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone in the first grade. I was hooked immediately, completely gone.

I reread it again as soon as I finished it. Then again. And again. I think I read it at least four times in a row before the school librarian made me return it.

That series opened the door for me in so many ways. The worldbuilding. The lore. The feeling that fictional characters could exist so fully that they almost felt real. Looking back now, I can see traces of that influence all over The Chronicles of Fate... In the way I obsess over details, histories, systems, relationships, and making characters feel like people beyond the page.

I was the kid who always had multiple books shoved into their backpack. Elementary school, junior high, high school... Didn’t matter. I got in trouble for reading in class constantly. During standardized testing, I’d walk in carrying a ridiculous stack of books because I always finished early and knew I’d need something to do afterward.

I read fast. Very fast (still do!).

School and public libraries actually made exceptions to checkout limits for me because otherwise I would’ve been back every single day returning books and taking more home.

Stories were where I lived more than half the time.

One summer, not long after being adopted, my new family and I went on vacation together to Orlando. We were at the beach; a normal kid probably would’ve spent the entire day in the ocean. Instead, I stayed in the hotel room reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. I regret nothing. Twelve-year-old me thought that was the greatest possible use of my time. Thirty-one-year-old me only wishes I had taken the book to the beach instead.

“And if history had taught any lessons it was that humans couldn’t get along with anyone, even themselves.” — Artemis Fowl Eoin Colfer, 2001

Artemis Fowl made me mildly obsessed with decoding hidden meanings and languages. The Gnommish language Colfer created along the bottom of every page brought me hours of delight even after closing the final page of each book.

In sixth grade, some friends and I would actually pass notes written in Gnommish during class because if the teacher caught us, they couldn’t read them.

Looking back, I think that was one of the first times I realized stories could extend beyond the page. That readers could participate in them. Live inside them a little.

I think that’s part of why I love lore-heavy storytelling so much now. I don’t want readers to only observe the world of The Chronicles of Fate. I want it to feel immersive. I want people theorizing, questioning, analyzing tiny details, and emotionally attaching themselves to the characters the same way I once did with mine.

“About three things I was absolutely positive…” — Twilight Stephenie Meyer, 2005

The internet has spent nearly two decades dissecting every flaw in Twilight, both on the paper and on screen. Some criticisms are absolutely fair. I can acknowledge problematic themes while still appreciating what the series meant to me and to YA publishing as a whole.

Twilight taught me something important very early: sometimes stories connect because of how they make people feel.

Not every wildly successful book has to be literary perfection. Sometimes atmosphere matters. Longing matters. Emotional immersion matters.

And whether people want to admit it or not, The Twilight Saga changed YA fiction forever.

Twilight pulled me headfirst into the world of modern YA publishing. The fandoms. The midnight releases. The commercialization of books. The realization that stories teenagers emotionally connect to can become cultural phenomena.

About three things I was absolutely positive?

• First, books had become more than entertainment to me.

• Second, stories were quietly shaping almost every part of who I was becoming.

• And third, writing was already finding its way to shape the trajectory of my future.

“The worst part of holding the memories is not the pain. It’s the loneliness of it. Memories need to be shared.” — The Giver, Lois Lowry, 1993

By the time I found books like The Hunger Games, Divergent, and Uglies, I had already realized stories could emotionally consume people. Those books showed me they could also challenge people.

Those series hit me at exactly the right time in my life. They weren’t just exciting stories—they were mirrors. Warnings. Commentaries on power, propaganda, inequality, conformity, violence, and the terrifying ease with which societies can drift toward cruelty if people stop paying attention.

“Remember who the real enemy is.” — The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, Suzanne Collins, 2009

There is power in dystopian fiction. Lines that hit you in the face years ago can come back around just as hard, if not harder, today. The best versions of Dystopia aren’t really about the future at all: They’re about us, about today.

Those influences are woven deeply into The Chronicles of Fate. The CCA, the Countdown Marks, the questions of control versus choice, identity versus expectation, the way institutions manipulate people while pretending it’s for their own good—it all traces back, in part, to the stories that taught me speculative fiction could say something real.

Scott Westerfeld’s Uglies series is another that left fingerprints behind in ways I couldn't fully recognize until adulthood. The idea that systems can reshape identity while convincing people it’s for their own benefit? That concept stays with you.

“It was up to him to pay back to the world in beauty and caring what Leslie had loaned him in vision and strength.” — Bridge to Terabithia, Katherine Paterson, 1977

Some books shaped me less through concepts and more through emotion.

Ellen Hopkins is a good example of an author that changed me as a person, changed me in ways I still struggle to fully explain. Her books were one of the first times I saw trauma written with raw honesty instead of polish. Pain that wasn’t softened. Grief that wasn’t conveniently wrapped up. Emotional spirals that felt ugly and real and human.

Reading her work felt like someone reaching directly into the parts of myself I didn’t know how to name yet.

Once you experience that kind of connection to writing—that feeling where words physically pull at something inside your chest—you never really forget it.

I think that’s part of why I began writing the way I did in high school. Emotion first. Brutal honesty second. Polish later.

I will never forget the feedback I received when I wrote my first truly honest piece, my short story Every.

I took the song Concrete Angel by Martina McBride—a song painfully tied to memories of my sister Holly, who I lost far too early in life—and turned it into a heartbreaking short story. I was fourteen, maybe fifteen years old when I wrote it.

That story would eventually be published, completely untouched, in The Cornfield Review, the literary journal for The Ohio State University at Marion. Published exactly as I had turned it in years earlier.

I still vividly remember my sophomore English teacher pulling me aside to tell me how powerful the piece was. She praised my writing every chance she got after that.

Something about that moment stayed with me. Not because I suddenly thought I was destined to become an author. But because, for the first time, someone looked at my words and treated them like they mattered.

That memory means the world to me.

Books like The Perks of Being a Wallflower, Bridge to Terabithia, The Fault in Our Stars, Firefly Lane, and even Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants left similar fingerprints behind. They taught me emotional vulnerability. They taught me that stories aimed at young people were allowed to hurt. Allowed to grieve. Allowed to be messy and complicated.

“And in that moment, I swear we were infinite.” — Perks of Being a Wallflower, Stephen Chbosky, 1999

There’s a reason so many emotionally broken teenagers become emotionally honest adults. Books helped some of us—most of us, in my opinion—survive ourselves whether we realize it or not.

But not every influential story in my life shaped me through heartbreak.

Some shaped the way I laugh. The way I use humor to soften heavier moments. The way sarcasm can become its own kind of armor.

Rick Riordan deserves a lot of credit for that side of my voice. Percy Jackson helped sharpen my sense of humor and sarcasm, especially in darker stories. There’s something incredibly difficult about balancing emotional heaviness with wit, and Riordan made that feel effortless. Plus, I got the added bonus of falling even more in love with the complex and fascinating world of Ancient Greek mythology through a modern lens.

“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.” — The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald, 1925

The Giver.

Holes.

Hatchet.

The Great Gatsby.

While half my classmates groaned through these assigned readings, I fell head over heels. I loved dissecting these stories. I loved the symbolism and themes and the multitude of interpretations.

Though now, being on the author side of things, I do laugh a little thinking about English teachers dissecting every microscopic detail of classic literature. It's ironic to me, knowing it's far more likely that many—if not most—authors were a bit more literal than teachers and professors want to believe. These authors likely were focused more on hitting deadlines and surviving through various manuscript edits on overloads of caffeine.

Still, I think that experience taught me something important too: once a story belongs to readers, it becomes bigger than authorial intent. People bring themselves into books. Their experiences. Their trauma. Their hope. Their worldview. Two people can read the exact same paragraph and walk away carrying completely different meanings from it.

That’s part of the magic.

“I have hated words and I have loved them, and I hope I have made them right.” — The Book Thief, Markus Zusak, 2005

When I look back at all these books together, I realize they didn’t just shape my writing. They shaped me!

My humor.

My worldview.

My emotional vocabulary.

My imagination.

My understanding of grief, love, friendship, survival, and resilience.

Stories were never entertainment alone for me. They were escape hatches, lifelines, warnings, safe places... Mirrors.

"... the world believed in fate, in the romance of destiny. But here ... the architects of that fate watched, planned, and waited." — Marked by Fate, K.B. Riley, 2025

Now, somehow, unbelievably, I’m on the other side of it all. I'm the one writing the stories and the poems. Maybe somewhere out there is another kid staying up way too late under a blanket with a flashlight because they just need to know what happens next.

And maybe, without even realizing it yet, those stories, my stories, will shape them too.