Student novelist has book about death personified published

Carolina de la Fuente/Contributing Writer

FIU is home to many excelling students. In this group of overachievers and high thinkers is our very own Carlos Paolini, who recently published his first novel, “When Adam Lacroft Met Death,” this past October.

Paolini is a 19 year old freshman here at the University and is currently majoring in advertisement. Weird, I thought, since he loves to write and his dream is to become a writer. I asked Carlos if writing was his hobby, “College is the hobby,” he replied. Paolini truly does enjoy advertisement, however, and believes he can use it in certain ways to further his writing career. As a way to get his book out there, Carlos got in touch with a production company and made a short movie trailer based on his novel. When I asked him to give me a preview, he told me, “Soon. February!”

At age 10, Paolini attempted to write his first novel. “It was a classic, utopian-destroy-the-future-kind-of story,” he laughed about it, “I only got up to the first chapter.” After that he dropped writing for a while but knowing he’s always enjoyed it, he then picked it up again during his teenage years. He began “When Adam Lacroft Met Death.” “It was really vain, it had no drive,” he said. It was about two years ago when Paolini began to make the story more complex and it began to come together as a real novel.

Paolini’s novel is about a young man who gets a second chance with death. In this story, though, Death is depicted as a human being; a beautiful young woman to be exact. “I love making characters out of evil women,” he says. “Death is my favorite, she’s so twisted.” It’s a fun, exciting young adult novel that takes you through the life of Adam Lacroft, a kid with an average teenage life that comes to an end in a horrible car crash. He gets a second chance when he meets Death, a beautiful girl who gives him an ultimatum: If he can find the person who killed him, he will get his life back. And that’s when the fun begins.

It took over a year of writing and finishing the novel to then take it to an editor and get it published, which took another 8 months. The process consisted of getting in touch with an editor who helped him edit a lot of his work. It was mostly words and phrases he wasn’t too exactly familiar with because of his clash in his English-Spanish language barrier. After 8 hardworking months, once it was ready, Paolini contacted a self-publishing company. He had two options: self-publish or to find a big publisher. Looking for a big publisher would be a longer process, Carlos explains. “I couldn’t wait, I was so anxious so I said let’s just self-publish.” He joked about how tired of reading his own novel he was, since the process requires proofreading so many times.

 What mostly surprised me about Paolini was that he’s lived in Venezuela all his life and just recently moved here to study at the University, so writing a novel in English, his second language, must have been a challenge I assumed. “I prefer writing in English,” he told me. Spanish on the contrary, is too formal. “It’s easier to write and use phrases young people can relate to in English.” Writing in English allows him to have a more “chill” way of writing; he uses phrases such as “FML” so it can give the reader a more relatable experience. Though one day he does want to write a novel in Spanish.

Being self-published and having his books on the shelves of Barnes and Nobles doesn’t necessarily mean he lives the life filled with book signings and traveling. Its refreshing to know how much of a normal and down to earth life he lives. “Nothing has changed, the book is pretty new so I’m still waiting for it to get known.”

As Carlos waits for the day he will become a well-known writer, he’ll be working to complete the full trilogy of his story. He already has the plots in mind and tells me to expect new characters and a new look on Death.

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