'The Dark Heroine' author Abbie Gibbs: In the beginning

You might have already heard of Abigail Gibbs. At 18, she has a six-figure deal with HarperCollins for her novel, The Dark Heroine: Dinner With a Vampire. Yep, that's what I said. 18. For a book she started writing at 14. Abigail joins us to describe her journey from teenage author to … well, super well-paid teenage author.

Abigail: I didn't start out thinking I would publish The Dark Heroine: Dinner With a Vampire. It was, to steal a phrase from Virginia Woolf, "a writer's holiday" -- a pretty ostentatious statement for a 14-year-old to make. But I had been swept up by the vampire craze (courtesy of Stephanie Meyer) and felt like I had something to add. Something darker.

It was only three years ago that I posted the first chapter of The Dark Heroine (then called Dinner With a Vampire. Did I Mention I'm Vegetarian?) online, for free. I chose Wattpad as my platform, an incredibly supportive community of readers and writers, and was not disappointed. Overnight, 95 people read my story and three people became fans. Within four months, it had gained 1 million reads and won a competition on the website. I was 15.

But despite the numbers I still didn't think about publishing. This was long before E.L. James and Amanda Hocking. If you gave away your work -- self-published it in any form -- then you were likely to be hounded by writers and readers alike declaring you had no hope of ever breaking into the traditional market. Three years later, it astounds me how much things have changed -- and the guarantee of change is about the only constant in a teenager's life.

I could see the change. The success of my story was filtering through the Web and all at once, the traditional industry I had been told to forget came knocking. As it happened, I still wasn't ready to publish (I was still 15!) and turned them down. But 15 million reads and 18,000 fans later, and it's hard not to believe in your story. When my agent approached me via Wattpad, I signed. In July of this year, news of a six-figure, two-book deal with HarperCollins for global English rights to The Dark Heroine came through. I turned 18 about six weeks later. I start university in October.

It sounds like a fairy tale. It is a fairy tale. But it wasn't easy. As the title suggests, it is vampire fiction, and you only have to glance over the young adult section of any bookstore to realize that particular genre is overdone. Trying to create something with a sliver of originality is a major headache. So what makes The Dark Heroine different? Why did I benefit from the changing world of publishing? Why did it explode on the Internet when so many people are tired of bloodsuckers?

Honestly? I don't know, but I can offer a few (arrogant-sounding) suggestions that lie in the story. It's dark, and gory, and sexy; my vampires are dangerous. They kill people and don't think twice about it. They commit atrocious acts. It will make you uncomfortable. And because of its darkness, its appeal extends beyond the young adults I intended it for. Perhaps, too, my age gave me an insight into my teenage protagonist's mind that older writers simply can't have. Perhaps it's because it's not pure vampire fiction -- a wider world, with its own politics and culture and threats, is introduced, too.

Or maybe, just maybe, I just got lucky.

You can find out more about The Dark Heroine and Abigail at the HarperCollins website.