WHS grad publishes novel with Penguin Random House
Savannah Brown’s first novel is set to publish in February 2019
Savannah Brown
WADSWORTH – Becoming an author has been a dream of Savannah Brown for a long time.
“In elementary school we were asked to draw a picture of what we wanted to be when we grew up and I drew myself – badly – hunched over a desk with a pen and paper; my rendition of an ‘author,’” said the 2014 Wadsworth High School graduate. “As I moved through school it became something of a pipe dream, a ‘maybe someday’ thing instead of a realistic goal, but the stars ended up aligning and I got very lucky at a young age.”
Brown’s luck came last September when she learned that Penquin Random House wanted to acquire of her two young adult novels. Her first novel “The Truth About Keeping Secrets,” is set to publish in February 2019.
“I was absolutely thrilled, and I got to have that great, momentous contract-signing moment complete with an illegible signature because my hand wouldn’t stop shaking,” Brown said. “Once everything was made official I realized how nervous I actually was that people were going to read this thing that I’d written and that nervousness hasn’t really gone away – but neither has the excitement. Penguin Random House is the best of the best and I’m so glad they’re the ones providing a home for my first two novels.”
“The Truth About Keeping Secrets” is set in a small, fictional town in Ohio called Pleasant Hills and is about a 17-year-old girl named Sydney whose dad, a psychiatrist, dies in a car crash.
Sydney finds a new found friendship with June, the town’s golden child who is one of her dad’s former patients. As the two grow closer and a series of anonymous text messages to her grow more threatening, Sydney begins to wonder what June is hiding and if her dad’s crash was really an accident.
“I definitely took the ‘write what you know’ to heart when dealing with the setting,” Brown said. “The town is pretty heavily based off of Wadsworth; even Sydney’s high school looks almost exactly like Wadsworth’s (the old one, pre-demolition) in my head.”
While none of the characters are derived from anyone Brown knows explicitly, Brown admits inspiration comes from everywhere and she said she has plucked certain traits and quirks off people she knows in real life.
“There are a lot of things about Sydney I can relate to – we both have a dark sense of humor and many of the same fears,” she said. “But we’re different in a lot of ways. I’m better with people than she is. She’s a lot braver than me. Truthfully, I think all of an author’s characters represent, at the very least, a sliver of the author.”
Brown said she doesn’t have much information to share about her second novel as she wants to keep it under wraps and it is not yet finished. This second book is expected to be released early in 2020.
Brown is currently living in London.
“I’ve always had a weird fascination with the UK,” she said. “I think the interest originally came about because of the accents, but eventually I made some friends who lived near London via the internet, and when I visited the city for the first time I just felt an overwhelming sense that this was the place for me. I got the chance to study in London right out of high school and I’ve been here ever since.”
In 2016, Brown self-published a book of poems titled “Graffiti (and other poems).” She won a Goodreads Choice award for this publication.
“The novels are the priority at the moment, but I’m always writing poetry,” she said. “I’d love to release another collection within the next few years.”
“In elementary school we were asked to draw a picture of what we wanted to be when we grew up and I drew myself – badly – hunched over a desk with a pen and paper; my rendition of an ‘author,’” said the 2014 Wadsworth High School graduate. “As I moved through school it became something of a pipe dream, a ‘maybe someday’ thing instead of a realistic goal, but the stars ended up aligning and I got very lucky at a young age.”
Brown’s luck came last September when she learned that Penquin Random House wanted to acquire of her two young adult novels. Her first novel “The Truth About Keeping Secrets,” is set to publish in February 2019.
“I was absolutely thrilled, and I got to have that great, momentous contract-signing moment complete with an illegible signature because my hand wouldn’t stop shaking,” Brown said. “Once everything was made official I realized how nervous I actually was that people were going to read this thing that I’d written and that nervousness hasn’t really gone away – but neither has the excitement. Penguin Random House is the best of the best and I’m so glad they’re the ones providing a home for my first two novels.”
“The Truth About Keeping Secrets” is set in a small, fictional town in Ohio called Pleasant Hills and is about a 17-year-old girl named Sydney whose dad, a psychiatrist, dies in a car crash.
Sydney finds a new found friendship with June, the town’s golden child who is one of her dad’s former patients. As the two grow closer and a series of anonymous text messages to her grow more threatening, Sydney begins to wonder what June is hiding and if her dad’s crash was really an accident.
“I definitely took the ‘write what you know’ to heart when dealing with the setting,” Brown said. “The town is pretty heavily based off of Wadsworth; even Sydney’s high school looks almost exactly like Wadsworth’s (the old one, pre-demolition) in my head.”
While none of the characters are derived from anyone Brown knows explicitly, Brown admits inspiration comes from everywhere and she said she has plucked certain traits and quirks off people she knows in real life.
“There are a lot of things about Sydney I can relate to – we both have a dark sense of humor and many of the same fears,” she said. “But we’re different in a lot of ways. I’m better with people than she is. She’s a lot braver than me. Truthfully, I think all of an author’s characters represent, at the very least, a sliver of the author.”
Brown said she doesn’t have much information to share about her second novel as she wants to keep it under wraps and it is not yet finished. This second book is expected to be released early in 2020.
Brown is currently living in London.
“I’ve always had a weird fascination with the UK,” she said. “I think the interest originally came about because of the accents, but eventually I made some friends who lived near London via the internet, and when I visited the city for the first time I just felt an overwhelming sense that this was the place for me. I got the chance to study in London right out of high school and I’ve been here ever since.”
In 2016, Brown self-published a book of poems titled “Graffiti (and other poems).” She won a Goodreads Choice award for this publication.
“The novels are the priority at the moment, but I’m always writing poetry,” she said. “I’d love to release another collection within the next few years.”
