When most other 10-year-olds were embracing book series like Harry Potter and Twilight for the first time, Maika Branch decided to pen her own fantasy novel. Now 14, the New Brunswick girl is navigating middle school while promoting a second book.
“It is fairly busy being a full-time author!” Branch told CTV News Channel on Thursday.
“There’s my school life and my friends, and outside of that I have this whole other world full of writing and events and presentations,” she added in an interview with CTV Atlantic.
Branch, who celebrated her fourteenth birthday just a few weeks ago, is preparing to release the second edition of her debut novel, “Calagarmii Cliffs,” which sold out its original print run. Branch’s self-published second novel, “Sisters of Serenah” is also now available for purchase. Both young adult books fuse dazzling fantasy worlds with the stunning backdrop Branch’s scenic home province.
“The first one was inspired by the Hopewell Rocks and the second one, because I was raised in a very forest-y environment, I kind of added that into my writing,” Branch said. “I tried to make it seem as if you could almost feel the way the trees are around you.”
The second book, Branch says, follows the adventures of two sisters, Skye and Laura, who live an isolated existence in a forest they call “Serenah.”
“Both sisters are shapeshifters,” Branch explained. “And this comes into play to keep them alive when a hurricane completely destroys their home and they’re forced to move far away with a boy from the human world named Tai.”
To Branch, writing is both an outlet for her creativity and a form of catharsis.
“I’ve always loved literature: to be able to have this whole little world that I can escape to whenever the everyday problems of my life are a bit too much,” she said.
The teen says writing comes easily to her.
“The process of writing? It’s not as difficult as people make it out to be,” she said. “You start off with an idea, something that inspires you, and you want to write more on that, to go deeper into it. And I absolutely love that I have all this power! I can create a whole world out of absolutely nothing.”
Inspired by her outdoorsy upbringing, Branch also contributes to a bi-monthly magazine about sustainability and off-grid living, all while going to middle school and learning three languages.
“We just kind of had to ride the wave and see where it all ended up, and the wave is still going, really,” Branch’s mother, Lidia Branch, told CTV Atlantic.
Branch is also helping other young people enter the world of writing by conducting workshops and school presentations across the province on a near-weekly basis.
“I’m working on showing people how they can use reading and writing as an escape, really, and that anybody can do it,” Branch said. “There are so many people who have amazing ideas and really want to write, but they believe, for a whole bunch of reasons, that they can’t. And I am trying to teach kids that they can, and how amazing it is to love reading and writing the way I do!”
Her passion is infectious. At her family’s home in Moncton, the living room coffee table is littered with ‘Thank You’ cards from students and story ideas from other budding novelists.
“It’s fun having them shout out different characters and ideas,” Branch said of her writing workshops. “‘Make it a camel on Mars,’ or ‘an elephant that doesn’t know how to drink!’ We’ve had all sorts of crazy combinations over the years!”
Branch says there’s a lot more writing on her horizon and that she hopes to continue inspiring other young people to pick up the pen and conjure up their own fantastical worlds.
“As for writing another book?” Branch said. “Well, I’m very glad to see where it takes me.”
With files from CTV Atlantic and CTV News Channel
