Sophomore moonlights as novel author

Ria Hill, a 19-year-old Tisch sophomore, was just like any other student — until Oct. 15, when she released her first self-published, full-length novel: "The Song of the Siren."

Hill's debut novel recounts a chilling shipwreck. After the crash, the ship's crew encounters a goddess-like siren. But behind her beautiful facade lies a devilish horror, which the crew must escape.

A storyteller at heart, Hill spent two years completing her novel — but she's still not sure where the inspiration came from since she didn't initially intend to write a novel.

"When I started writing it, I was just writing random, non-sequitur scenes about … the sirens, who originally didn't have much in the way of personality," Hill said. "But then they developed these personalities over time until it almost had to be a book."

After writing 400 pages, Hill began the process of refining her work into a novel and searching for an agent and publisher. Yet after months of no results, she knew it was time to take another route.

"It was kind of disheartening," Hill said. "I looked into it more, and discovered that really nobody was [searching for new authors] because of the economy."

Hill then decided to pursue a method she had originally been "wholeheartedly against:" self-publishing. Hill said the company she chose, Xlibris, differs from the typical "vanity press." Xlibris is a print-on-demand publisher that sells the majority of its books online, and only the number of books ordered are printed.

It seems unimaginable that an NYU student could balance schoolwork and novel-writing. Hill does admit that it was difficult at times, especially because she hand wrote the majority of the novel.

"I wrote most of the book late at night when I couldn't sleep or at lunch on loose leaf notebook paper," she said.

While writing her novel, Hill was met with skepticism from her peers. Some people thought she would give up, like many writers do when attempting to write a book. She said much of this is due to her young age.

"Saying you're going to write a book is a lot different than actually writing a book," Hill said. "A lot of my friends didn't [understand] that it takes a lot of work, or that I was willing to put in a lot of work to tell the story."

Hill is currently working on her second book but ultimately wants to pursue screenwriting. Although the two types of writing are different, she is hopeful this experience will help her in the future.

"Every experience reading something, writing something, watching something, listening to something, is always going to influence you somehow," she said. "I really do think it's going to have a strong impact on my writing in other mediums."

Kelsey Desiderio is a staff writer.