I've been writing a little bit (again) this past week -- or, rather, doing mostly editing of things I wrote over the last few years but somehow never got around to finish. I'm going to be publishing them through Amazon (Createspace for dead-tree versions and the Amazon Digital Text Platform for Kindle versions). Each has its own challenges, especially formatting. In the case of the print version, I continue to be amazed at the difference font makes in how we perceive what we read, and I've now learned more about Serif fonts than I care to mention, but I digress...
So, without further ado, here's the first one for kindle & iphone (through the kindle iphone app): The Plan. Go get it! :-)
I wrote the first version of The Plan in Spanish in December 1999 as a sort of episodic novel that I sent around to a group of friends from Argentina over email, every day. It was, as these things usually are, written mostly for my own entertainment (and that of my friends :)). At first I wasn't sure where I was going with it but over time the characters became a bit more formed and in the end I took all the emails and re-wrote it as a book. But it was still in Spanish.
Fast-forward a few years and when I started blogging it occurred to me to start Plan B, a 'blognovel' (and yeah, I coined the term, not that it caught on that much beyond a small set of mentions). The Wikipedia entry for "blog fiction" mentions my musings while working on it though. Like with The Plan, I wasn't sure where Plan B was going at the beginning but I started out from the idea of basically following the same character a few years after the events of The Plan, and Plan B contains a bunch of scattered references to its, um, prequel, and near the end it becomes clear that the genesis for the events of Plan B lay with what happened in The Plan a few years earlier. Of course, at that point no one could get The Plan or even knew of its existence.
So after writing Plan B (which, as an aside, was left unfinished online due to, well, finishing the thesis, starting a company and all that, but I've now completed it and will complete republishing it) I came back to The Plan and rewrote it in English, this time with the followup of Plan B firmly in mind. The styles of writing, while similar, don't exactly match since The Plan is really intended as a verbal narrative whereas Plan B is straight-out first-person writing, which I meant to use as a subtle device to show the evolution of the character.
I think over the last few years I've re-read (and tinkered) with The Plan a two or three times, and now after this final edit I came to the conclusion that this was it and I should either abandon it or publish it.
So here it is. If a few people enjoy it, then it will be worth it. :)
PS: I'll also be publishing Plan B in the near future, but with a change to the title. Plan B will remain online but the re-published version will be expanded (a 'director's cut' if you will!).
PPS: There is also another novel that I'm finishing editing. This one way more ambitious, complicated, and generally a lot darker. That one will come after these two are out. :)
