PBHS Staff

Interview With Published Author 

By Farrah Muhammad 

As a premier STEM school, Poston Butte boasts many courses and clubs related to various fields in STEM. However, many students, like myself, are interested in the arts and humanities. The visibility of such career paths tends to be low. Fortunately, we have a published author within our school walls to shed light on the writing and publishing process.

Mrs. Sorensen, a current substitute at Poston Butte, is the author of The Keeper series. The series currently includes The Soul Keeper and its sequel My Brothers Keeper. The debut novel follows Naunee, a college student, as she navigates her supernatural ability to see dead people and allow their spirit to “borrow” the body of another individual. 

Mrs. Sorensen initially got the inspiration for her book from a dream. She describes being in a dream and seeing “the person I was dreaming about, I knew it was them but it was a different person.”  She wrote up the concept as a short story before taking it to her neighborhood writing group. They helped her expound upon her ideas until they eventually grew into the length of a novel. 

She started her novel in 2008 and would “play with it and put it away and then bring it back out.” It wasn’t until 2019 that Mrs. Sorensen began to explore publishing. At first, she went the traditional route by “sending out query letters to literary agents” but she was met with rejection or no response. 

Miraculously, she stumbled upon a book signing at Costco and asked the author for advice. He shared with Mrs. Sorensen that he “self-published to Amazon and then got picked up by a publishing company.” She looked into Amazon self-publishing and found Kindle Direct Publishing which “was so easy and walks you through step by step.” The process was completely free. From there, her book became available through both a paper copy and an ebook.

Mrs. Sorensen encourages students interested in writing to “just sit down and start typing out your thoughts and see where it goes” She regrets letting her fear stop her from publishing sooner. Sharing her writing and opening herself to feedback has helped her learn and grow for her future work. Despite her worries, the reviews of her novel have been really positive. 

Her final word of advice is to “just go for it. Even if it’s not your life’s work and just something you enjoy, have some fun with it. Explore it.” 

You can find more information about Mrs. Sorensen and her books at her website,  https://www.anitasorensen-author.com/.