Luca Mullins is a published author at just 12 years old.

Image Credit: SUBMITTED / Paula Presta

Luca Mullins never thought he would be a published author at 12 years old, and certainly not for a love story.

“I’ve never really planned on publishing anything, it’s just something that I’m interested in, something that I do because I find it enjoyable and I love doing it,” Mullins says.

The Kamloops kid has been writing short stories since he was about six years old and has always had an interest in historical events. He began writing The Fire Triangle when he visited New York with his parents last August.

“Stories about 9/11, for me, have been floating around in my head when I first learned about the disaster… one of the main things I wanted to see in New York was the 9/11 memorial,” Mullins says. “I wrote it the day I got to the hotel. I started writing it there, and then on the plane and back in Kamloops and I just kept writing it.”

Mullins was finished by November and printed the story off for his mom to read.

“I hadn’t written a love story before,” Mullins says. “My mom found it kind of interesting because she thought that I got it bang on, and I wasn’t basing it off anything more than my mom and my dad and the love that I’ve seen, but not in the first person.”

The Fire Triangle follows a brand new couple who both work in the first building of the World Trade Centre. The pair are among the injured in the attack and form a strong bond, hitting various relationship milestones as the story spans through nearly two decades.

Paula Presta, his mom, says this was the first time she had ever read of romance in one of her son’s stories.

“He’s always written short stories, so it didn’t surprise me that he’d written something about 9/11. But when he printed it off and I read it, I was kind of like, this one is a little different... The fact it was a love story from the perspective of an eleven-year-old was a little fascinating,” Presta says.

Presta says she took the printed story with her for a getaway with some friends, and she says all of the women enjoyed reading it around the fire. It was then that she decided she would self-publish the book for her son’s Christmas gift. A short while later, a detour during a work trip would offer a much better kind of gift.

“I was in Victoria for work in November and I noticed that Friesen press had an office in Victoria,” Presta says. “They were more than interested in publishing it, and not just self-publishing but being involved in the process… we signed a contract with them and he gets royalties and it's pretty amazing.”

“He has always been a little shy about this book. He’s been proud of his other short stories, but this one, being a love story, being eleven years old and just turning 12, going into high school, he was starting to feel self-conscious about it,” Presta says. “Now that there's been some momentum and there's been so much positive feedback, I think he's a little more confident with the story.”

The Fire Triangle is available as an e-book, hardcover or paperback. You can buy a copy of the book by clicking here.

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