Former student Kathy Forti is about to have the third novel in her Stacks series published this April. The series initially started as a pilot script in a Writers’ Program course.

Kathy says, “Before I became a clinical psychologist, I was a news writer with a Broadcast Journalism degree from New York University. However, it wasn’t until I signed up for a TV pilot writing course at the UCLA Extension Writers’ Program that I took writing in a whole different direction. The STACKS story began as my class project and Bill Taub was my instructor. Bill loved the storyline and thought it was quite unique. He encouraged me to make it into a web series and enter it in some writing contests, all of which I did. That original TV pilot script won a Slamdance Teleplay Award in best original script. But life took me in another direction and it wasn’t until COVID hit that I decided to try my hand with turning the concept into a novel.”

She continues, “I never thought it would turn into a sci-fi trilogy series with so many twists and turns. The rabbit hole kept getting deeper as I wrote about a library employee who accidentally discovers an interdimensional portal within the Library of Congress which leads to a Library of Truth. This Truth library contains all the secrets on everyone and everything since the beginning of time and, of course, there’s some bad people who have been manipulating it for power. The book reviews I got were positively astounding–even from Kirkus Reviews. I used my strong background in psychopathology to write believable, but uniquely flawed and unlikely heroes. People who read my books usually say it flows like a fast action television movie. I’m sure that has a lot to do with my writing class with Bill Taub. He was a true inspiration.”

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