The Hilltop High Universe
I always wrote stories for as long as I can remember, but it wasn’t until high school that my stories took on the shape of a universe. In middle school, I would write funny stories about me and my classmates in an apocalypse or else fanfiction about my favorite fantasy novels. But in highschool, my attention turned to more relevant stories.
At the time, I read a lot on Wattpad, but I was sixteen when I published my first book there. One day, while I was scrolling through popular books to read, I noticed that so many of them followed a similar plotline: “My Brother’s Best Friend” or “My Best Friend’s Brother” etc. But they were all between a boy and a girl, or between two boys. At the time, I hardly saw a single one between two girls. I wondered—but no. Who would read it? Then I thought, why not? Seven years later, I had over 1.5 million views and decided to self-publish it.
In those seven years I would write four more stories which would become The Hilltop High Universe. I wrote a shorter story, Sunshine & Saltwater, about classmates Theo and Ronan on their cautious road to first love at Hilltop High. My next story, Blurred Lines, follows the turbulent friendship and love story of Rhys and Maverick as they navigate highschool drama. As seen in the epilogue, Rhys and Vera are cousins. While beginning college I wrote The Anatomy of Love about Jackson Cooper, who appears in Blurred Lines as the first boy Maverick infamously kisses, and his subsequent journey to find love in college. In my senior year of high school, I wrote His Last Love, one of my more sentimental stories, about two boys from Hilltop High who meet again in college and fall in love.
Besides The Hilltop High Universe, I wrote two poetry books, a steamy one-shot about Hilltop High characters, and a popular Snowbaz fanfiction. But my guilty pleasure has and always will be Archive of Our Own, where I’ve posted 14 works, everything from Drarry one shots, to long Harry Potter fics, to an original historical fiction novel.
Ultimately, if I’ve learned anything from writing and posting for free online, it’s that nothing beats an anonymous comment that your story made their day or made them cry or touched their heart, and nothing matters more than your readers.
