The night before her book launch event, Shalanda Stanley had a nightmare that only three people showed up. One of them was Randy Travis and he didn’t even buy her book.

Much to Stanley’s excitement, the real-life turnout for the release of her first novel, “Drowning is Inevitable,” was much larger.

Hosted in Walker Hall, the front row was filled with Stanley’s students eagerly clutching their copies of the novel, expressing how they would stay up all night to read it.

Behind them the room piled up with people of all ages. When Stanley made her entrance the room erupted in cheers so loud a baby started crying. Stanley almost cried herself.

“Drowning is Inevitable” is about 17-year-old Olivia who is living in the shadow of her mother’s suicide. The town of St. Francisville expects her to follow in her mother’s footsteps, but after her best friend’s fight with his father turns deadly, Olivia’s life goes into a different direction.

It’s a story about die-hard friendship and how far they are willing to go for each other.

“When a 17-year-old friend tells you they would do anything for you, they mean it in a way an adult can’t,” Stanley said. “Adults have the wisdom to know there are things we shouldn’t do for each other.”

Stanley always wanted to read this story, but she could never find it so she wrote it.

Stanley was born a writer. Stanley, an assistant education professor, was also born a teacher. She didn’t know how to be both until recently.

“When you’re little and someone asks you what you want to be when you grow up, you say a writer. But the older I got the harder it got to say out loud,” Stanley said.

Then it became a secret. She stopped telling people out loud and it was as if she lost a piece of herself.

“It took a really long time to pull those pieces together and be both,” Stanley said.

It took a year to write, “Drowning is Inevitable.” After getting an agent and sending her book out to editors in New York, Stanley was rejected.

Until a couple days before Christmas in 2013, Stanley got an offer from Knopf, the biggest children’s book publishing company in the world. After two years of editing, Stanley’s book was published Sept. 9.

Kelsey Osbon, a former student of Stanley’s, loves getting lost in books and can’t wait to do the same with Stanley’s novel.

“When I open a book and get lost in the words, it’s like a different world,” Osbon said.

Osbon, a senior elementary education major, said her favorite thing in the world is to finally look up from a book and not know how much time has passed.

Osbon has always wanted to write and illustrate a children’s book, and Stanley’s success has given her hope.

“I don’t think she knows what a positive impact she has made on so many students’ lives,” Osbon said.