Alek Willsey couldn’t bear reality, so he turned to fantasy.

He was a senior in high school. It was a Thursday. He and his girlfriend had broken up. In the eyes of Willsey, his life had crumbled.

So the 21-year-old junior from Belton was silent at school on Friday, returned home, locked himself in his room for two days and wrote a novel.

Now he has plans to do it again.

In high school, Willsey had been procrastinating assignment for a class, but the process was cathartic more than anything.

“It was about a teenage boy who was having extreme issues,” he said. “It was very emotion-filled for that first draft.”

He passed the class, and put the book aside. He admits it wasn’t any good. Then, last year, his friends challenged him to complete it.

Eight drafts later, ex-girlfriend behind him, he did. And on March 23, he quickly published “The Spark” through CreateSpace, Amazon’s self-publishing company. Willsey compiled PDFs of the story, designed a cover and submitted them through CreateSpace.

Today, “The Spark” can be purchased through [Amazon](http://www.amazon.com/The-Spark-A-G-Willsey/dp/1482709821), [Barnes & Noble](http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-spark-a-g-willsey/1114915764) and, soon, Quirks in the MU Student Center.

“I could finally see this is more than real; it’s finally happening right in front of my eyes,” he said.

He has sold about 100 copies from the trunk of his car and tallied 850 free downloads for Kindle so far, mere numbers for profitability but innumerable numbers for worth.

“Just knowing the fact that they have those words somewhere, and (the words) could be going through their minds is probably one of the most inspiring things for me,” he said.

That inspiration led to Willsey’s desire to continue and finish the series, what he now considers a trilogy. He plans to release the second book, “Invasion,” next year.

“I just have to finish the story,” he said. “It’s an unresolved thing that’s sticking around in the back of my thoughts.”

When Willsey thinks, his eyebrows burrow, digging for a precise thought. When he finds it, his eyebrows jump, and he smiles, realizing he has found the right ending.

The stories Willsey, a philosophy and mathematics major, writes are psychological. They delve into abstract concepts, into the latest topics he’s been studying in class.

“The biggest thing I wanted people to take from (“The Spark”) is anything that you see may not actually be how you see it,” he said.

Something Willsey can’t see is his future.

A year shy of graduation, he said he knows writing will always be a hobby of his, but he’s unsure of what he’ll be doing as a career.

“I’ve always thought about working in maybe like a bank or something,” he said. “Or maybe something completely different.”

Willsey, who sports black frames and long hair, mirrors Billy Colehorn, the protagonist in “The Spark.” The fictional setting, Winsview, Mich., is a small town similar to Belton.

In Chapter 2, Colehorn lays in bed and thinks, “How could anyone love a guy like me?”

But as Colehorn’s story lengthens, so does Willsey’s.

In Chapter 6, he writes: “Imagination is powerful. It can make anything seem real. Even if it is not.”