Maryland Teen Wins James Patterson Contest
Olivia Ferrante DiRuffano, a 17 year-old prospective author, recently won a contest to have her work published in a book by James Patterson. She says she’s wanted to be an author since she was in Grade 6.
She found out she won the Nevermore Fanfiction Writing Contest in June.
“I had to resist the urge to scream with happiness,” Olivia said.
The contest was to write a suggestion for the last chapter of his book Nevermore: The Final Maximum Ride Adventure. Olivia’s entry was one of 500 submissions received. The chapter will appear in the paperback edition of Nevermore, set to hit shelves on January 1st, 2014.
She wrote her submission in one day and had never read any of the Maximum Ride books before starting on the contest.
“The main characters in the series have been through so much crap in their lives, and so I decided to just make it sort of a peaceful ending,” she said. “When I found out the title of the book was Nevermore I remembered Edgar Allen Poe, so I kind of put a new interpretation of his poem in there… I used the rhyme structure to create a new poem about the characters.”
Olivia also won a new iPad 2, signed copies of the complete Maximum Ride book series and a $2,500 scholarship.
She is working on a novel of her own and is about 100 pages in.
“I really want to get my book out by the end of this year so I have some way to pay for college,” she said.
