Photo Courtesy of  Betty Araya

“I want to be a writer. My dream career would be to write stories [in] a variety of mediums, primarily books [and] novels and be able to sell them like any big-name author. I tend to write young adult novels, coming-of-age stories and science fiction. I’m really open to anything that I find interest in, but those are what I tend to stick to. A book [series] that has inspired me, ever since I was a little kid, was the “Percy Jackson” series. I read them back in, I think, elementary school, and then a little bit again in middle school. And it always just really stuck with me. The intrigue of the story, the kind of craziness and mystical-ness of the world. That has really inspired me with a lot of the things I’ve written. Especially in my own work, a sci-fi series I’ve been writing since I was about 15. The biggest series that I have is “The Wanderer;” it’s a superhero series that I created. It follows a kid named Jason – there are three stories that are written right now – following his life from 16, then 20 and then 24. He has powers he comes across and then discovers what it means to have them and the title of “The Wanderer.” He has to incorporate that new aspect of life into his normal, everyday life which, in [and] of itself, is already a mess. To me, it’s sci-fi, space, action and adventure, but a lot of it is coming-of-age. It has to do with this young kid coming into his own and understanding who he is [in relation] to the people around him. A lot of the writing that I do, so far at least, has been based on the things that have happened in my life. To a loose degree, obviously, but characters are often are created based on a frame work of somebody I know. A lot of the stories have to do with people back home. There are groups of people I pick from and try to put together to tell stories. Even with something like “The Wanderer,” which is so outlandish and involves aliens and fighting and space, there are still those little interpersonal momen