She was barely a ninth-grade high school student when she began writing her 364-page novel.
Now, a first-year art student at UCLA, Latoya Raveneau, is in the middle of releasing her novel, “Rhine Angel,” to bookstores nationwide on Jan. 9, 2009.
“I began “˜Rhine Angel’ in a free period in freshman year at Fontbonne Hall Academy when I was sitting in the computer room and I randomly felt like writing a sentence … and it wasn’t supposed to turn into a story … but I guess it did.”
Until recently, Raveneau only told her family and close friends about the publication of her novel.
It wasn’t until Raveneau received the release date of her novel that she began telling people about her book.
“I was shocked when I found out that Latoya was publishing a book … seriously, who does that in high school?” said suitemate Tina Hoang, a first-year undeclared humanities student.
Raveneau, a New York native who went to an all-girl, Catholic school, based the plot of her novel in the same setting.
Her main character, a 15-year-old girl named Lone (short for Lonetoir, which is a combination of “lone” and “Renoir,” after the French impressionist painter), is a lonely girl with only two best friends to keep her company.
In an effort to find purpose in her life, Lone accidently comes across a book that she opens and releases cosmic energies into the world.
Raveneau explains that Lone’s story is about finding self-worth and making a place for yourself in the world. Lone finds her own self-worth by becoming master of the powers released from the book.
Although not reflective of herself or immediate people around her, Raveneau claims that her novel takes regular bits and pieces from her ordinary life in and outside of school to create the magical world.
Raveneau said her own best friend, Jessica Vederosa helped her continue writing the book.
“She read my first little excerpts and then she read more and it continued to go that way until it was 265 pages long,” Raveneau said. “Having someone to read it really helps the writing process.”
Raveneau began making efforts towards publishing her novel after her parents, who were always very supportive of her dreams, jokingly mentioned that she should try to get money from writing so much.
In spite of her parents’ teasing, Raveneau submitted her completed novel toward the end of her high school freshman year to Tate Publishing. In September 2005, three months later, she received a call back from the company informing her that they were interested in publishing the novel.
“When I first got that call, with me running around the house, that was definitely the most excited I ever was,” Raveneau said.
Feeling overwhelmed by the process at such a young age, Raveneau looked to her parents for help managing the publication of her book.
“After that, my mom took full reign of the publishing process,” Raveneau said.
The publication process required a lot of grammatical editing, proposals, samples, and even censorship editing on the publishing company’s part, Raveneau said.
She added that she had to be quick in defending the themes of her novel, in some cases by responding to the publishers and meeting with them along with her parents.
Although very excited about the release of her novel, Raveneau admits that the publication process was very exhausting and that a lot of the excitement she had when she first received the phone call faded away with years of editing. Right now, although uncertain, Raveneau is considering publishing a sequel to her book.
As the publishing date of January fast approaches, Raveneau is more excited now that people will finally be able to buy and read her novel.
“I really just want to go to a bookstore and just see it there,” Raveneau said.