“Frankenstein,” “Jurassic Park,” and crime scene investigation — all of these meet in an award-winning mystery novel written by two freshman Emerson students.

Asher Robinson and Ethan Nikkel are childhood friends turned roommates from San Diego, and, last semester — their first at Emerson — they wrote the novel, “In His Image.” Set in the 1990s, the mystery sci-fi novel follows a criminal profiler in New Orleans who, in an attempt to understand the mind of serial killers, fuses the DNA of various criminals to create one perfect killer.

Published this February, “In His Image” has received the Gold Book Award by Literary Titan, an organization dedicated to connecting readers with the work of independent authors. It has also been given a five-star rating from Reader’s Favorite, a book review and award contest site.

Robinson said the book came from a 1 a.m. brainstorming session in their dorm last fall.

“We built it out the next morning,” Robinson said. “I was already at my computer, like ‘All right, give me more specifics, man.’ I was already typing up the first chapter.”

A 30-page outline for the book followed, before they each took turns working on the draft, cranking out the first draft in a mere 13 days. 

After alternating writing and editing between the two, the book came out to around 300 pages. 

“[Nikkel] had a much bigger workload than I did last semester,” Robinson said. “We would talk about what he thought I should add, I would go through it, then we just kind of went chapter by chapter and did that.”

For two writers so dedicated to their craft and projects, it may be surprising to learn that neither is majoring in writing, literature and publishing. Robinson is a business of creative enterprises major, and Nikkel is a media arts production major. 

While Robinson has been writing since he was a child, up until this point, Nikkel has only edited Robinson’s books rather than co-authoring them. Nikkel also applies the collaboration skills he learned from this experience to his work on student films.

“I like to say everyone working on something is kind of a piece of the clock, like a cog, and we all kind of work together to do something,” Nikkel said.

Robinson explained that he hopes to go into the operations and production side of filmmaking, and that his writing is connected to that ambition. 

“You need to know what a good script is. You need to know what good writing is, and I feel like to know what good writing is, you need to be able to know how to write,” Robinson said.

Nikkel agreed, saying that the two of them plan to adapt the novel into a screenplay.

“This stuff is creative work just as much as making a short film,” he said. “We already know what we would change around because we know what would work better for TV rather than a book.”

Despite their plans for the story, finding time to write is something both Robinson and Nikkel are always struggling to find as college students. During that first semester of putting the book together, they would write for a few hours at a time in the common area of Little Building. 

Post spring break, however, it’s been difficult to block out that time.

“When I’m writing, I get really engrossed in it. I’m in this world, I’m invested in the characters . . . it’s a step up from just reading a book,” Nikkel said. “It’s not hard to find the motivation. It’s hard to find the time, now that everything is closing in on these last few weeks.”

“I think if you enjoy writing, the motivation is there,” Robinson said. “Writing for me is like, instead of scrolling on my phone, what else can I do to entertain myself? Let’s write because that’s also very entertaining. It’s probably even more entertaining.” 

When they finished the book, they self-published it through Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing service, which Robinson had long been familiar with. He also submitted the book to various critics and awards. They received three four-star reviews and two five-star reviews from Reader’s Favorite, and Literary Titan gave a five-star review from Literary Titan. The latter entered the book into Titan’s Book Award contest, to which they won gold.

“[It’s incredible that] something that we wrote the rough draft of in 13 days during our first semester of freshman year of college won an award,” Robinson said. 

“The whole notion that something we came up with in our brain, that kind of came out of nowhere, is compelling to other people, I mean, that’s art,” Nikkel said. “That’s being creative . . . it’s really great to know that people actually appreciate what you’re doing.”