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Ridge Eighth Grader Publishes First Book in Trilogy

Ridge Eighth Grader Publishes First Book in Trilogy

In 2021, random story ideas started popping into Ruthvik Kotagiri’s head.

“Over time, these ideas got bigger, and soon enough, I was unable to contain them,” said Ruthvik, an eighth grader at Ridge Junior School. “I wanted to let my ideas go, but I had no idea how to release them, and in what form.”

He decided that writing out his ideas was the way to go. And a year later, Ruthvik published a book entitled The Broken Shards (Reality’s Reach Book 1), now available on Amazon.

The book tells the story of four best friends and their journey into the moon. When it is revealed that there is a major threat to their world, their adventure begins. 

While publishing a 235-page book might seem impressive enough, Ruthvik plans two more books in the series. He is already about halfway finished with book two and plans to start on the third book this year as well. 

Ruthvik has dabbled in writing short stories in the past, but he would run out of ideas in the middle and would stop writing. This time things were different. He began writing and building on the main idea. 

“When I started, I didn’t think it would be this big, I thought it was going to be maybe 30 pages, maximum 50 pages,” said Ruthvik.  “But then it turned out this big, and I didn’t want all my work to go unread. So I asked my dad about publishing it.” He and his dad researched publishing options and decided to publish it through Amazon.

What does Ruthvik think is the best part of publishing a book? “It just feels satisfying to get ideas into my mind and then write them out instead of just keeping them in my brain. So I feel that it’s a huge relief to get it out.”

The entire Ridge community is proud of Ruthvik’s accomplishments. “Our students come to us with various interests, passions, and talents,” said Doug Panfalone, one of Ruthvik’s teachers. “When I met Ruthvik at the beginning of the year, he could not wait to tell me about the book he was writing. Fast forward a few months later, and I received an email from Ruthvik which included a link to his e-book on Amazon! How cool is that?”

Panfalone went on to say, “But it gets better. A few weeks later he brings me a hard copy of the book, and students in my CORE class were reading his book during our designated reading time.”