The first time I wrote a story, I was in third grade. I became forever hooked on creating characters and their storylines and gained a love for books and exploring the worlds they offer. I wrote my most successful book to date – The Run, now being globally distributed.
Fast forward to eleven years old. My journey began on Wattpad – an online platform of readers and writers alike. Within weeks, I gained eight hundred fans; this number blew my mind. My novel steadily grew in numbers and soon reached an audience of three million people, written with child-like curiosity. Characters straight from my naive and oddly mature imagination were finding fans far from my small-town in Danbury, Connecticut. After attending a fantastic preparatory school, – the Berkshire School in Sheffield, Massachusetts, my intellect was supported by its teachers and their independent lifestyle. In those few years, I wrote two new books for The Run trilogy. In 2015, I was nominated for Wattpad’s Author of the Year, where my novels were then becoming ranked in terms of reader popularity.
Early in my high school career, I met the person who made my writing dreams come true. Meet Craig Bouchard, a highly successful businessman and a New York Times Bestselling Author. He led me to my editor, Carole Greene, and Jaunique Sealey, who sat patiently through conference calls, advising me, and Kirby Miller, whose tech-savvy skills brought my books to places that couldn’t have been achieved without him.
Now, at twenty-three years of age, I own a publishing company named after my first successful book. Shortly after graduating college, I landed a publishing deal with Olympia Publishers for my book “Find a Penny, Pick Her Up.” The YA novel won the 2022 “Watty” award for one of the best YA titles of the year, given in testament to its “authentic portrayal, its emotional depth, and its ability to weave a compelling coming-of-age narrative.”
Find a Penny, Pick Her Up is available for sale at your nearest Barnes & Noble, Waterstones, and Amazon come November 28th, 2024.
For more information, visit https://olympiapublishers.com
Penny, a former mean-girl, had it all. Reigning over high school is already an achievement, but doing it with your best friend – a girl who’s the ultimate bully, is what everyone really wants. But when Penny falls into the trap of peer pressure and alcohol, everything changes. A car accident kills a fellow, loved student, and she’s blamed for it. Penny is immediately ostracized from everything she’d worked so hard to maintain, but when a mysterious outsider enters the picture, Penny uncovers chilling secrets about the accident that changed her life. There’s themes of love, toxicity, and betrayal that highlights the plotline of the book.
Catch a short sample from Find a Penny, Pick Her Up by clicking below.
The Run follows Lindsey, where life as a foster child proves to be hard enough. But when Lindsey is forced to move out of her foster home and live illegally, her already complicated world is stirred by Nathaniel – an obnoxious, pushy, and conceited boy who can’t seem to leave Lindsey alone. The Run showcases a crazy journey of adventure, a hate that turns into the most unexpected love, and reveals that no one saw coming.
Catch a short sample from The Run by clicking below.
Craig Bouchard is an entrepreneur and company builder. He was a finalist for the prestigious Platts S&P “CEO of the Year Award” in the global metals industries in 2018. Mr. Bouchard is a New York Times Bestselling author. His book “The Caterpillar Way” also reached # 1 on the Barnes & Noble Best Seller list (McGraw Hill 2014.) He is a Director of Run Productions.
Of Ms. Wray, he said, “I was asked to meet with Sydney by her mom in 2018 to potentially mentor her as a writer. I gladly did so because by age 13 Sydney had 2.5 million readers of her first book, “The Run.” Sydney has since become one of the greatest writers of her generation. She will be soon mentoring me. It’s an honor to play even a small role in helping build Run Productions into a major publishing house.”
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