A PARALLEL WORLD

We all have dreams we wish to come true. For 17-year-old Cooper Milne, it hasn't taken very long for that to happen. She recently published her first book of a two-part series and has plans for book two to be available by this time next year.

The Warriors of Destrey: Part One of the Destrey Series, is a 296-page story about a girl named Acta who, according to Milne, portrays her own life. "She's my doppelganger," Milne said, adding that the story mimics happenings in her actual life.

"I wrote this story as a way to escape to a world that I wanted to live in," Milne described the experience. "I want to give someone else the opportunity to escape like I did by reading books."

Milne's duology is targeted toward young adult readers, the age group she feels she can best relate to. Although, she shared that older readers have also enjoyed her story of a "parallel world, a fantasy world, a nation who devotes themselves to war."

At the age of 11, Milne recalls riding in her brother's truck and internally telling herself that one day she would become a published author. "I've always had an active mind," she admitted, "and by 12 (years old) I had developed the book, my thoughts were forming the characters."

It took her until she was 15 years old to get these thoughts written down. She claims that at this age, she realized life was beginning to move fast and there was no time like the present.

"My story line was bits and pieces" up until then, but it only took Milne just over two years to accomplish what takes some a lifetime. She has published one book and has two that are in the process of being edited, the step prior to publishing.

One of these two is the second story of her duology, The Soldiers of Ahirman: Part Two of the Destrey Series. The other is Intluxx, a story Milne describes as more "futuristic, science fiction, or a thriller" in comparison to the Destrey series which she defines as "full of action, a mid-evil setting with modern technology" where conveniences such as electrical light come from stones.

Originally the series was going to be comprised of three books, according to Milne. "I rewrote everything because I was not happy with what part one was originally looking like," she said. Wanting everything to be perfect, she recognized that she would have to limit the series to two parts to achieve this.

Book one went through four editing sessions before Milne published her book with Amazon.com, where the book may be purchased from. She had also hired someone to write the back-cover blurb and was fortunate to have a woman from Germany offer to create the cover design. After describing what Milne had envisioned her character to be, the cover showcases a blonde-haired teenage girl covering her face and head with the hood of a dark cloak.

Through research, Milne has found that most well-known authors are discovered more than three years after being published (although some can take a lifetime). She is hopeful that she will be found and sees herself remaining in Montana while becoming an emergency medical technician, a mother and continued published author.