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While other teenagers have diaries or an archive of Instagram stories to commemorate their childhood, Nicole P. Austen ’25 has a published book. “Black Magic,” which Austen started writing when she was 13, was published last August. As the first book of her children’s series “Shadow of the Pack,” “Black Magic” follows the magical adventures of a wolf pack.

Growing up in Los Angeles, Austen was an avid reader who would “always have a giant book on [her] desk.” She described reading the “Warriors” and “Guardians of Ga’Hoole” series as a child, and how she did not want to stop at merely reading these books — she wanted to write them.

“I just really enjoyed being able to do what the authors I loved did with words,” she said. “I just loved words and playing around with them and making sentences that just felt right or that surprised me. There was something really satisfying about it.”

Books weren’t the only thing that inspired her. The setting of “Black Magic” was inspired by the nature she grew up surrounded with.

“My family likes to go on vacation in Portland, Oregon and hike up there,” she said. “I sort of absorbed the woods and then put them in the book.”

Austen’s family encouraged her early writing efforts, recognizing it as a worthwhile hobby they wanted to support. Her family, in fact, were the first people to buy her books.

“My dad would take [my chapters] and laminate them […] and then I would sell them to each member of my family for a quarter,” she said. It created an environment that helped Austen build the habit of writing during her school breaks.

Writing was never a static experience for Austen. Because the process of writing “Black Magic” extended through most of her teenage years, she viewed it as a sort of homing beacon.

“I never really felt completely separate from it or like it was a different time in my life,” she said, “mainly because I kept revisiting it so often to edit it again and again.” Writing served as a constant that accompanied her as she grew up — a way for her to keep tabs on the progress of her life.

Austen was drawn primarily to fantasy, which she attributes in part to how it allowed her to process her own opinions on real world issues.

“In fantasy, you can sort of address things in a way that is unique and imaginative and a little less head on,” she said. In an often exhausting world of ambiguities and social issues, fantasy was an escape, an outlet that freed Austen to (literally) write her own story.

Though the worlds that Austen’s characters reside in are fantastical, she insists on them still making sense, building her world’s social principles and beliefs before delving into the inner psyche of each character. “You have to think about how different things have proliferated and exactly why [characters] think in certain ways,” she said.

As an English major pursuing a secondary in Classics, she obsesses over world-building and creating fictional social structures in her writing, confessing that “mythology is very much in my head.”

Since “Black Magic” is a children’s book, Austen was mindful of the lessons that she wanted kids to take away from it. She focused particularly on encouraging readers to accept themselves for who they were.

“[Gaining acceptance] is a tough thing for kids, I think, and something that is on their minds a lot,” she said.

However, she was careful to balance these messages with entertainment. “I think what kids want to read is what they should read,” she said. “And I think that whatever would broaden their imagination and make them happy […] is what they should be reading.” As such, “Black Magic” is not merely a book about the hijinks of a wolf pack in a forest — it revolves around themes of family and friendship, and of accepting yourself even when others may not.

Rather than work on multiple ideas at once, Austen prefers to go all-in on a single idea and focus on that project for months at a time — a strategy that doesn’t always come easily to her.

“I know a lot of writers have this thing where they think of a ton of ideas, and they can’t decide which one to go with. And I honestly wish that were me, because I will just sit and wait for the idea to just come to me,” she said with a smile. “I never have any idea what I’m going to write after my current project because I’m so all in on whatever I’m writing right now.”

Though it leaves her “aimless for two to three months” following the completion of a project, it does explain why writing is so dear to Austen, because she is absorbed by whatever story she’s working on, each finished project is a time capsule of the person she was when she wrote the book, a familiar friend that is almost like a “homecoming.”

Of course, this means that each of Austen’s projects are also extremely personal. When describing her finished book, she said, “It’s just something that exists in the world, but that has come 100% just out of my brain, which is,” she paused — “really weird.”

The feeling of putting writing out into the world for others to read is heady and exciting, but it’s vulnerable, too: It exposes the writer to critiques of something that they’ve poured their soul into. Austen described the process of sending her work out for edits as “going up to someone and being, like, ‘Punch me in the face.’” Despite this, she relishes sharing her work, pointing out that the process makes her “tougher.”

In the future, Austen is excited to branch out and explore different genres of writing. “I want to write a creative thesis, and so I think that might be an interesting place to do something totally new,” she said. “A sci-fi novella might be really cool, but I also might do realistic fiction or something along those lines.” In the meantime, though, she’s working on her next novel, an epic fantasy called “The Soul-Forged Crown.”

No matter what the future holds for Austen, one thing is clear: Writing will always be a significant part of it.