WALNUT COVE, N.C. -- Lots of people think they have a book in them.

Few, though, have the pluck required to do the work necessary to transform a casual impulse into a coherent story on paper.

Fewer still manage to do that before they have full driving privileges.

But at the age of 16, Laura Gamble started and finished a fantasy novel called "Regenero: The Ways of Mages." It is now a 408-page book put out by PublishAmerica, which combines elements of traditional and on-demand publishers.

Gamble envisions "Regenero" as the first book in a four-book saga that will take people not only way back in time but also all the way to the end of the world. Key characters reincarnate across time. Unlike the characters in many stories in which the end of the world is waiting in the wings, on its way or -- heaven forbid -- upon us, the characters in Gamble's saga aren't trying to stop the end from coming.

They're just trying to make things go a little more smoothly.

"It's just a story about trying to make it so that the world doesn't end horribly," she said.

It took a while for the book to find its way into print, and Gamble, who lives in Walnut Cove, has since graduated from South Stokes High School. She is now an 18-year-old freshman at Elon University.

Growing up, Gamble had to deal with the usual assortment of challenges faced by everyone, plus a couple of uncommon ones, being tiny for one. Now 4 feet 8 inches tall, she was sometimes teased, and she found that writing offered a positive escape.

With that in mind, she says she hopes, as a teacher, to one day help middle-school students discover for themselves the power of writing.

Gamble published "Regenero" under a pen name -- Julia Rose. The "Rose" is Gamble's favorite flower, and she says she thought that it went well with "Julia," which she chose in honor of Julia Frye -- a Sunday-school teacher and youth-fellowship leader at Home Moravian Church who supported Gamble's writing over the years.

"She surprised me with it," Frye said. "I was so touched."

Frye noted that Gamble also has the good fortune to have supportive parents.

Her father, Bryan, is a technical analyst for Wachovia, and her mother, Angie, is a substitute teacher at a local preschool.

As proud as Angie Gamble is of her daughter, she has had to make one or two mental adjustments. One of the characters is prone to cursing. Nothing too far out there, but still ...

When she said to her daughter, "That's not how we speak in this house," her daughter responded that that's just how that character is.

As an avid reader of fantasy and horror, Gamble has been feeding her imagination for years. She would rather own a book than check it out of the library, and the shelves in her room are filled with paperbacks.

Long before she began her novel, she was writing stories and doing comic strips with her cousin, Sara Gamble.

"We always had really wild imaginations," Sara Gamble said, adding that her cousin has a gift for character.

"She watches people and she jots down ideas," she said.

Gamble routinely k.jpg a spiral-bound notebook with her so that she can write or draw in it when she has the chance. Once she fills one notebook, she starts on another. Over the years, she has created quite a stack of them. At home, she types everything into the computer.

Unlike many writers, Gamble believes in rewriting. She spent about eight months on "Regenero."

"My friends joke that it was my premature baby," she said.

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