Mineola High School Graduate Debuts First Novel

graduate Louise Caiola fulfilled a wish Saturday at  in Huntington when a crowd of friends and family turned out for her first book signing as a recently published author.

Caiola read from her debut novel, “Wishless” and answered questions from the crowd about the writing process and her other writing projects while signing copies of the book.

The young adult novel chronicles the story of Chessie Madrid, a 16-year old girl who receives a diagnosis of a fatal disease and decides to tell no one except her grandmother. She wants to live her life as though she isn’t ill, fulfilling her wish list.

It took about a year to complete the first draft, Caiola told a crowd of around 60 who came to the signing. “Plus another few months to revise it,” she said. A single parent of two grown children, Caiola works full-time in the office at J&T Auto Repair and writes each evening when she gets home from work.

“I usually lock myself away in the bedroom; I need quiet to write,” she said. “I write anywhere from a half hour to an hour or more each evening. The more you do it, the better you get.” Her biggest challenge is to “find a new and exciting way of saying the same old thing,” she said.

The book changed several times during the writing process, including after receiving feedback from agents. “One said to amp up the stakes, to make it more interesting,” she said, so Chessie became ill.

Caiola keeps a file of ideas, usually in a notebook but sometimes on scraps of paper, writing down lines until she finds a home for it. “It’s organized chaos, but it’s a file,” she laughs.

While she says her characters aren’t drawn from any particular person, they sometimes have bits and pieces of people she’s known over the years, and has kept her children and parents out of the book.

Caiola’s friend Mary Kiernan-Tighe is one who can see herself in the book. “She’s the only person where I can actually say that a composite of her is in there,” Caiola said.

“She has all these ideas in her head and will get them out,” said Kiernan-Tighe, who supports Caiola’s writing and attended a conference with her on how to get your book published.

Caiola’s parents, Frances and Nicholas Caiola, were there to offer proud support, along with sister Christine Paganelli, niece Marissa Paganelli, and friend Ed Calabro and his children. “Her writing has just blossomed and she has made us so proud of her,” Frances said.

Her children are fans, but said they didn’t get to read the book until it was published. “We loved it,” older daughter Melissa Martone, 22, said. “It was easy to keep reading. She does a good job at the end of each chapter in making you want to read on.” Nicholas Martone, 19, agreed, saying he remembers his mother’s discipline when she would start writing. “Don’t interrupt when she’s typing,” he laughed.

The urge to write has been with Caiola since she was a teen, and has now able to develop through online stories and maintaining her own web site and blog.

Caiola describes her next project, “Girls Like Her,” as a young adult book that’s edgier than “Wishless” and she’s working on a third women’s fiction work with a mystery element that’s tentatively titled “Ana Baby Blue.”

“I love mysteries,” she said. “Any time I had money when I was little I’d go to Korvette’s and buy a Nancy Drew book.”