A musician and writer from Queens, New York, Alex Aller is no stranger to taking a leap of faith and exploring the artistic medium on her own. After making the decision to walk away from her deal with Sony RED to focus on her own projects and creative processes, she never looked back. Gone were the nights where she jumped around on stage, belted cathedral high notes in front of crowded rooms and did her best to keep a red wig from sliding down her head under her pop moniker, Skela. As Alex herself explains it, she was tired of trying to fit that singer/songwriter mold — and when she realized that she had spent nearly half of her life pouring her soul into words she never shared with others, it all became clear. Literature and creative writing were her true calling.

“One summer when I was very young, I got grounded for quite a long time and ended up writing my first book,” she recalls. “It was terrible, really bad, but it was the spur time where I realized that I loved long-form writing, specifically fiction.”

Fast forward to 2020, Alex is about to release her most unorthodox project to date, making a debut with Building You Up —a full-length contemporary fiction novel accompanied by a record of all-original music. “It’s just like two things I’ve always done, and two things I’ve always loved,” Alex explains. “And then I just realized one day that it was a very natural thing for me to do, you know?” Merging the musical and literary mediums to create an immersive experience in the comfort of your home, she hopes that these two separate entities can work together to give readers and listeners a chance to dive deeply into a new world.

Ergo, the first page was conceived, followed by the first song that ended up becoming a title track for “Building You Up”. “When you come of age, there’s this natural thing that we do — we build people that we love up in our heads,” Alex said. “Romantic partners, friends, parents, even people we don’t like — we like these ideas of them up in our head, that’s just how it all works.” Think of it as a coming-of-age story with a deeper underlying meaning to it: it’s a literary dialogue on mental health, relationships and overcoming trauma during the formative years of your life to build a better future. The kind of story that little Alex would like to see in the media when she was growing up.

Alex compared her book to Perks of Being of A Wallflower — if it had its own original soundtrack: “It’s the movie playing in my head — and now it’s yours too. And this won’t be the last one.”

The project is now exclusively available for pre-order on her website, byalexaller.com. You can also find more of Alex’s work on her Spotify, Instagram and YouTube channel.