UAlbany Author: Casey Wittchen at 22 has One Novel Down, Plenty to Go

ALBANY, N.Y. (December 2, 2015) — UAlbany senior Casey Wittchen's need to write is a 24/7 passion, whether her writing surface of choice be a computer screen, plain paper, gum wrappers, or, she admits, her arm. In 2014, at 21, she became an “indie author,” C.A. Wittchen, publishing the paranormal fantasy Behind Locked Doors, a 416-page tale that reflects her literary upbringing on fairy tales and folklore.

It’s probably just the beginning for Casey, a digital forensics and criminal justice double major, who’s already completed two other novels. One is the second in her 9-novel Devils Grace series, featuring Tempest Laurier as heroine. The series began with Behind Locked Doors and Casey intends to self-publish all of it. The other novel is The Stream Swells Where Shadows Cannot Reach, the first of another series. For this one, she is seeking an agent to attract a major publisher.

She has two other novels in the works. In addition, seven months after book publication, she put out Behind Locked Doors in an audio book narrated by film actor Todd Haberkorn, famed for his voice-over work on the Japanese anime series. Haberkorn liked her work and Casey has contracted with him to narrate the entire Devils Grace series.

Casey’s academic history at UAlbany hasn't followed a traditional writer’s path but, then, there is very little traditional about her. As her mother Heidi, says, “Casey never wanted to study writing, because she never wanted to be told how to write.”

Nevertheless, her muse is a sophisticated one. Behind Locked Doors is told from three different points of view concerning the odyssey of 17-year-old Tempest, a girl who can see fairies and who decides to search for her birth father. Her journey is one that brings more than demons out of the shadows. It puts her upon a road filled with physical and psychological pain, but ultimately self-discovery.

Casey’s road to publishing went through CreateSpace, Amazon.com’s self-publishing site, where she produced Kindle and paperback versions. Good reviews followed from both Amazon (88% of reader reviews give it 4 or 5 stars) and Kirkus. Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and local small bookstores stock the work in any of three formats.

Goals? She wants her books ultimately to take her to The New York Times Best Seller list. She wants to create clothing and merchandise off of her novels, and she’s taken UAlbany business courses to aid that objective. She also wants to travel to countries such as Japan. Toward that end, she learned elementary Japanese through the Japanese Studies program.

Casey’s website says she has “one foot in reality and the other in fantasy,” but her accomplishments are already quite real — and pretty fantastic.

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