Issue date: 10/4/07 Section: A&E

Media Credit: Steve Berry Sophomore Lauren Gerber displays her first novel "Serrated Soul," written under the pen name Desiree Draven. Gerber's novel was published this summer.

Ever since she was little, Lauren Gerber knew she wanted to be an author when she grew up.

"All the other little kids wanted to be a ballerina or a fireman, and they always changed their mind every year, but I always told my parents I wanted to be an author," Gerber, a sophomore English student, said.

Gerber's fiction novel, "Serrated Soul," was published earlier this year under her pen name of Desiree Draven.

The main character in the book is Johnny, who is dealing with real life issues such as his cousin dying and his parents' recent divorce. Instead of trying to deal with these things in a positive way, he dwells on them until he begins having terrible nightmares.

To avoid having these dreams, he stops sleeping, and becomes an insomniac.

Then, the demons in his nightmares begin to haunt him while he is awake. He is left with a choice: fall asleep and kill himself or try to wake out of his nightmare.

"It's a pretty intense book," Gerber said.

Gerber said she thought of the idea for the book from observing people and life in general.

"People can think they're helpless, and feel like whatever happened to them can break them. I think that people can break themselves or allow themselves to be broken when they don't have to be," Gerber said.

The novel is based on the philosophical idea that life is influenced more by perspective than reality.

"The world that you create in your mind matters as much as the tangible world that you experience," Gerber said.

These themes are something Gerber said she has thought about for a couple years. She said she has seen people around her fall into the trap of self-pity and their negative feelings drag them down more than they should.

Sophomore communications major Meaghan Kennedy is about 150 pages into the book. Kennedy knows Gerber from living in Prairie Hall last year.

"When I bought the book, it was more for support, but then it turned out to be actually really good," Kennedy said.

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