Well, yesterday I finally accomplished a dream I had since I was a young man and got my first novel published and at this point have even moved product. The journey of this book was simply the most mind-exhausting experience that I would never trade. The subject matter is not something that is really my most knowledgable on, so that led to tons of research (I heard my Creative Writing teacher Berwyn Moore in the back of my head saying "write what you know" the whole time).
The idea came to my head late last year when reading the Yahoo reports of the state of Texas considering independence, which they did not do, but this made me beg the question of what if they did. So I had to look into the process and since this is a work of fiction, I could mold cerain ambiguous elements of reality and create the story that made sense. The idea of a multi-layered conspiracy that spanned many years was intriguing to me. I had to start the conspiracy back in a time before the dominance of technological surveillance everywhere. What better way to do that then have a bunch of young college students get together and make their plan in secret. I didn't want to focus on the past too much, because I wanted to keep the present the focus of the novel, but I did have to include one flashback sequence just for a feel of the characters and it told an important part of the story.
I had hoped to have the novel focus a lot more on the economic situations, but upon revision felt like a lot of those elements hurt the flow and seemed redundant with the things that the Voice was saying anyway. The whole time I had planned the start of the revolution being the destruction of the New York Stock Exchange, because it is the center of the economic world and has massive political fallout with it as well.
The other hard choice I had to make was the decision of how much of the fighting that I wanted to present in the book. I chose less is more, for three reasons 1) the first half of the book has no violence and I didn't like making the switch from the political drama that was developing to a complete action story, 2) I have never served in the Armed Forces and have never seen a battle live and in person, so it is not something that I felt would be a genuine writing experience for me at this point in time, and 3) it did break the flow of both the story and the narration, I had used a God-like narrarator with a journalistic style throughout, so I could get away with the telling of some the minor details and keep showing the process and the politics of the novel, which always was the core of the book.
I loved the idea of a mystery person using the technology available and created to be able to rally the people right under the nose of Big Brother and made them impotent to stopping it. I wanted to bring a chaotic and anarchial element into the book and that was the purpose of the Voice.
The secrets that get revealed throughout the novel were all planned from the start. It was almost designed like the 3 Act movie sscreenplay style, in regards to reveals. Act 1 sets up the conflict between the Voice and the President, leading to the first big reveal in Act 2 which brings us to the rising action of the story, leading to the climax which of course had one more reveal for the reader.
I could have easily made this novel be the second coming of War and Peace, but that was never an influence on me as a writer. The novel is obviously influenced by 1984 (there is some significance to the title other than the year that is coming) by George Orwell, some elements of Catch-22 by Joseph Heller and there is a lot of homage to Victor Hugo's Les Miserables. These are three of my favorite novels ever and were a great influence on me, the writer of the novel.
I did the best I could with the time constraints placed on myself and the fact that this was done by myself. I entitled the book 2014 and was going to make sure the book would be out on the market before the year started. I did not have the luxury of being funded to sit back and just focus on the book. I had to work and pay the bills and find the time to make all of this happen. I know it is not perfect and I would be foolish to think it would be. I know there will elements of the story that will infuriate the readers, but that is the intent. I want to create a book that would hopefully stir up debate between people and have dissenting opinions on is worth. That was the main goal of releasing this novel and I hope that I succeed with that element of the story telling. I wanted the themes and the ideas to be the focus. God forbid, I wanted people to actually stop and think for a even a passing second, that was the primary goal.
The novel 2014, my first foray into published works is currently available on Amazon Kindle and at createspace.com. Here is the direct link, https://www.createspace.com/4060599 . It will also be available on paperback at Amazon.com by the end of the week. I hope that those of you who purchase this novel will enjoy it and tell all your friends about it.
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