A 15-year-old Welsh schoolgirl disrupted the publishing world while keeping her work a secret. Per a great piece in The Financial Times, Beth Reeks started writing obsessively at all hours and would hide her work or switch panes on her laptop whenever anyone approached. A 24/7 obsession eventually paid off:
By the time she had started her A-levels, Reeks’s novel (she writes under the name Beth Reekles) had garnered some 19 million “reads” and 40,000 comments; even though her book had not yet been published in the traditional sense. So while Reeks was at university studying physics, her work was turned into an ebook, then a paperback (she was offered a three-book deal by the mighty Random House) and, this year, Netflix released it as a film, which has become essential viewing for many teenage girls.
Click on the link below for the inspiring story.