Katherine Repasky | assistant editor

For Duquesne University political science student Ryan Lestitian, the idea for his first novel came to him naturally through the help of a story his family had been telling for years.

Lestitian recounted the story stating that once when his uncle was on duty as a police officer in Washington, D.C., he was called late at night to a tense situation. He noticed someone nearby holding what appeared to be a metal object, and with his gun ready, he came close to shooting the unarmed person.

Though the situation was descalated, the story stuck with Lestitian and eventually became the inspiration for psychological horror novel “Cell 900.”

“I always thought it was interesting to contemplate how one split-second decision could change your whole life,” Lestitian said. “One of the main ideas behind the story is the danger of making decisions without knowing all of the information first.”

The novel follows main character Luke, a former police officer who takes a job as a prison guard after a tragic accident.

Throughout the story, Luke specifically has to deal with making quick decisions and living with the consequences of those choices.

Lestitian himself had to make many of these sorts of decisions during his writing process.

The story began when Lestitian was still in high school. He started researching and writing the novel at 16 years old during the COVID-19 pandemic, before eventually taking a year-and-a-half gap between high school and college to focus fully on finishing it.

Lestitian said that writing the first draft was “the easy part,” which was followed by a much longer and strenuous process of editing.

“The one thing that really took me by surprise was just how long the editing process would take,” Lestitian said.

After sending the manuscript to an editor, he estimated it took about five rounds of edits and more than six years before the book was released.

While the editing process seemed to overshadow the creative side at times, Lestititan said what kept him going was his main goal in wanting people to enjoy his work.

“I did go into it with thinking the number one thing I wanr from people is just to enjoy the story,” he said.

To make sure his goal was achieved through “Cell 900,” he used his own experience as a student, who primarily reads for class assignments, to help him think of ways other readers might become disinterested.

“I try to imagine what people might get bored of fast and do my best to avoid it,” Lestitian said.

Lewis Kicinski, a friend of Lestitian’s who read “Cell 900,” saw this approach first hand.

“All the characters had interesting and unique storylines and motives,” Kicinski said.

He described the book as “extremely detailed and thorough, especially in its setting.”

Lestitian mentioned that readers should not go into “Cell 900” expecting a typical police drama simply because the setting is in a prison and the main character is an officer. Instead, anyone looking for a good sense of uncertainty would be interested in the novel’s narrative.

“It’s not going to be an episode of ‘Law & Order,'” he said.

Lestitian also credited his experience at Duquesne so far in helping him develop as a writer, though he finished the manuscript for “Cell 900” before coming to college. He has taken both creative fiction and creative nonfiction courses from the English department.

“The fiction workshop course helped me think of new ideas I can use in the future, while the nonfiction workshop taught me more about precision and how to make every word count.” Lestitian said.

Debbie Lestitian, a graduate of Duquesne’s Thomas R. Kline School of Law, said seeing her son succeed at the university has made his experience as a young author especially meaningful to her.

“On top of law school, I also got married in the chapel at Duquesne, so having Ryan attending and succeeding is a full-circle moment,” Debbie Lestitian said.

Lestitian said he hopes to take the skills he has learned from Duquesne’s liberal arts courses to help him develop his next novel, which is already in the works.

Though Lestitian’s next novel bears some familiarity to his writing style in “Cell 900,” such as falling into the genre of psychological horror, it is more action based.

“[It is] in no way a continuation of ‘Cell 900,’” he said.

As a busy political science major, Lestitian is currently working on balancing his writing with his studies. Though overloaded at times, Lestitian said he has no plans to stop writing.

While he plans on attending law school in the future, he said that he would love to write full time if the opportunity became available.

For any students who wish to write a novel of their own, Lestitian said the biggest lesson he learned from having gone through the publication process is not to get stuck trying to make the first draft perfect.

“Just write something, get to the end, and then just go back,” Lestitian said. “I think consistency and sticking with it is infinitely more important than just pure skill.”

Katherine Repasky can be reached at repaskyk@duq.edu