Ever since Vacaville resident Tatiana White was a little girl, she’s been a natural storyteller. Now, the culmination of her lifetime of make believe, “The Gifted Society” is out and ready to read.

White’s debut fantasy novel tells the story of 16-year-old Alexia and her secret strange abilities. She must go on a journey to save her friend and face off against powerful adversaries in the process.

Although the book was just recently published in 2024, for White, the process began decades ago.

Growing up, White was “always addicted to movies and books,” she says. She would run around acting out her favorite stories, often complete with homemade costumes from her godmother.

But when she first started writing, her talent was clear.

“I remember I wrote a poem for my best friend Veronica in fourth grade and it won this national contest. I think it was read on PBS,” she says.

From there on out, writing was a passion. “It really set my soul afire and calmed it at the same time. Still to this day there’s nothing like it,” she says.

As a young teenager, White searched for representation in the media but found it somewhat lacking, she says. “During my childhood, there weren’t really a lot of books with Black characters going on adventures or journeys,” says White.

So she turned to television and comics and fell in love with the X-Men. Back then, she used to shop for comics at Boys of Summer Comics and Collectibles in Vacaville.

“I really loved Storm,” she says. “I was just obsessed with this concept of seeing this Black goddess who could fly and she could control the weather, they called her the weather witch, and she just had so much presence and such mythos about her.”

Her love of writing and of the X-Men led her down the increasingly popular path to writing fan fiction.

After those first writing days as a student at Vanden High School, White continually went back to her story, reshaping and reimagining the characters and plot.

Years later, After moving to Delaware from California with her husband, White began posting sections of her story on Wattpad, a writing and reading site that blends the line between content creator and user.

Week after week, she added to her story and eventually amassed over 200 thousand followers, she says.

Eventually, she decided to seek representation to get the book published, but after years of trial and error, despite hearing continually positive feedback about the book, she had had no luck.

And then in October of 2019, her father was diagnosed with cancer. He died just a month later.

White took a break from editing and rewriting until one day she found an old letter from her dad, who had been a writer himself.

“He felt like he neglected a lot of parts of him and a lot of his talents, trying to make it day by day and always thinking he had time,” says White.

“That told me ‘you got to get up.”’

“You cannot wait for people to tell you it is okay to tell your story,” she says. It was then that White decided to go through with it, finishing the book and publishing it herself.

When her campaign to get “The Gifted Society” published went live, White was named one of the 15 Black Kickstarter creators to watch in 2024.

She’s constantly nervous, she says. From running the kickstarter to continued advertising efforts, it often requires massive amounts of confidence. “I always have this quote in my head that’s like ‘it’s okay to be scared, but do the thing anyway,”’ she says.

When White wrote the first ever line that would turn into “The Gifted Society,” she was 13-years-old.

Now at 38, she’s hard at work on the sequel.