Costa Teacher Wachell self-publishes new fiction book “The Right Amount of Brilliance”

By Taylor Phillips

Copy Editor 

Costa English teacher Nicole Wachell is hitting the bookshelves with her new self-published fiction novel, The Right Amount of Brilliance.

Wachell had been working on her novel for nine years and completed it this past summer. According to Wachell, she knew when she was 18 years old that she wanted to be a novelist and has always enjoyed  writing fictional works of literature. She started working on The Right Amount of Brilliance after abandoning two other projects she had been working on prior.

“During my sophomore year in college, I started a new novel about a teenager who worked in a hospice and wrote multiple drafts of that work before abandoning it to start the book I published.” Wachell said.

The Right Amount of Brilliance is a fictional novel that tells the story of Sebastian Barnabas and Jake Washington. Barnabas and Washington are twins who were separated from each other when they were three years old and reunited with each other 40 years later. Barnabas, a mathematics professor at Stanford University, and Washington, a science professor at the University of California, Berkeley, learn about each other and the family secrets that reveal the reason why they were separated. Each character also deals with personal hardships within their respective lives that make all the events that they are enduring more difficult and troubling. 

“My favorite scene to write was probably a flashback scene where we learn about one of the protagonist’s father, Daniel,” Wachell said. “I really enjoy crafting, manipulating, and shaping symbols, so it was fun to use the suit as an emblem of Daniel’s internal conflicts.”

Wachell was inspired by Pascal’s Triangle and used the triangle to create the plot and the characters’ personal struggles that ultimately make it harder for them to come close together. Pascal’s Triangle is a mathematical triangle where the sum of two numbers is placed below the two numbers that are being added. The triangle is always expanding outward and growing.

“Since Pascal’s Triangle formed the structural foundation of the book, I relied on its features to inspire the plot,” Wachell said. “The basic idea of the twins’ estrangement came from the triangle: there is one entity that splits apart and grows further from itself. I began a rough draft before writing anything about the characters and I slowly started growing their individual worlds.”

Wachell started writing the novel while teaching English at Mira Costa and spent her summers working and writing her book. She spent two to three years working on her first draft of the novel but was unable to give much attention to her writing after she had her two children. After taking a step back from writing, Wachell returned to her book. Wachell would meet with Costa English teachers Shawn Chen and Matt  Wheeler, along with Drama teacher Jonathan Westerberg, to workshop on their respective writing projects. 

“For a few years, we would meet every month, at which point we’d share pages we’d written and workshop our writing,” Wachell said. “Their constructive criticism was really instrumental to my editing process. In general, I tend to brainstorm ideas in a journal before I put down any words on the computer, but once I have a draft of a passage or chapter, it’s helpful to get responses from readers about what’s working and isn’t.”   

In the winter of 2019, Wachell had a completed draft that she submitted to a professional editor. The editor helped Wachell refine her novel with edits to the language and the development of the characters before she tried to find a publishing house although after trying to find a publisher she ultimately decided to self publish. 

“It’s a tough industry and my book is  fiction and experimental, so I decided to put it out myself,” Wachell said. “I’m hoping to use this self-published novel as a springboard to get more traditional representation for my [future] novel.”

According to Wachell, she is excited that she has completed this project and to share her work with the rest of the world after spending a long time working on the novel. The Right Amount of Brilliance was published on Aug. 4 and can be found on Amazon and at the Manhattan Beach  Pages store. Note that the novel does contain mature and explicit content. 

“I’m glad that the book is finally available for people to read, but honestly, it’s also unnerving,” Wachell said. “When you publish a creative work, you’re suddenly very vulnerable, especially since you don’t know how the work will be received. But it’s also exciting, and I’m so appreciative of the support I’ve already received from people in the community. This book is fundamentally about identity, family, and how we define success in our lives. I hope readers enjoy the psychological exploration of these topics, and perhaps get some gratification from the mathematical structure.”