While most professional and amateur writers are celebrating National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) this month by creating new fiction, Pasadena, Calif., native A. Lynn Phillips is reveling in the fact her novel The Quest of the Unaligned is now available in the University Bookstore. The University Bookstore will feature her at a “Meet the Author” event, Nov. 14 at 7 p.m. where she will read and sign books. Phillips, a Ph.D. student in business administration with a specialization in marketing at the UNL College of Business Administration, has utilized her education in her fiction and plans to pursue a life of teaching and research.
 
“The Quest of the Unaligned is not only an adventure story, but is also designed to be a supplemental resource for undergraduate sociology classes, complete with discussion and essay questions,” Phillips said.
 
Her inspiration for the novel was sparked by a classical sociological theory class she took as an undergraduate sociology student. The novel follows a young man, Alaric, through his journey from being raised in a society where achievement determines status to living in a society where birth determines status after learning he was born a prince in the latter.
 
Phillips incorporates her business knowledge into her fiction in subtle ways all readers can understand. For example, inventors use magic to create new products, but to avoid scaring customers they position their products as a new brand that provides the best innovation science can offer. This insight into consumer behavior illustrates Phillips’ union of sociology and marketing.
 
She first came to the university to earn a master’s degree in survey research and methodology, and took classes from three CBA marketing faculty members while completing her marketing minor. Each of these faculty members encouraged her to apply to the Ph.D. program in business administration.
 
“After taking consumer behavior, marketing research and advanced quantitative methods for business, I was convinced I wanted to advance my methodological skills and then earn my Ph.D. in a consumer behavior related field,” she explained.
 
Although she enjoys writing fiction, her goal is to become a marketing professor and continue writing fiction for fun in her free time. Published: November 12, 2013