Last year, after being fired from my job –which I got only two and a half months before– I had to make a stop in the road and reassess some of my life choices. I had gotten that job after struggling with my own company for some years.
As an entrepreneur, I had traveled through the ups and downs of managing a company that was offering a service considered “weird” (yeah, the euphemism is “innovative”). When I decided to return to be an employee, I had already been through the “fat cows, thin cows” periods for seven years (so much for Biblical coincidences), and I was feeling exhausted.
I got the job offer in less than two weeks after I started looking, so I thought the Universe was sending me “positive signs” that I was walking in the right direction, even though something in my heart was giving me a faint warning. The warning had to do with the reasons why I had decided to become an entrepreneur in the first place, and somehow, becoming an employee again meant a betrayal to such reasons.
Anyway, I found out very soon that the market considered me to be “too old” already for the kind of positions my professional profile could get me, and that the “expedite hiring” I had experienced was just a very rare lucky strike. “Too old? I’m just 49 years, for crying out loud!” Yeah, too old, my friend. Even 40-year applicants are “in the edge” already.
Oh, well. For some years back then, I’d been telling everyone that, when I was old and retired (you know, with a lot of time still ahead of you and trying to find a new sense of purpose in life, like everyone who becomes a senior citizen), I would be a writer. Life, it seems, has its way to push you into your true vocation. I realized I was “old and retired” already –or at least the job market seemed to be thinking so– and I was feeling full of energy and ideas, crazy ideas.
So, I began to devise a whole world. It had to be somehow similar to our world, so anyone could relate to it and find themselves reflected in any of its multiple facets, but at the same time, I wanted it to be completely alien so that anyone could find an “awe moment” in every page where it was going to be described.
And I created Koiné, and the Five Breeds, and then the world map, and the cities and settlements, and the world’s history, and the characters, and the plot, and the way to tell such a monstrous thing (pun intended) in a way the reader could keep interested. How do you reveal the world that is inside your head in a way that anyone else can begin to get a glimpse of it, without feeling they’re reading a glossary of terms or a dictionary? How do you help the reader to relate to the Breeds and imagine them?
Well, I just released the first volume of seven, to wander alone in this world. Will my baby withstand the storms? Will she grow up and walk, run, fly? How far will she go? Only time will tell. Only time will tell.
As an entrepreneur, I had traveled through the ups and downs of managing a company that was offering a service considered “weird” (yeah, the euphemism is “innovative”). When I decided to return to be an employee, I had already been through the “fat cows, thin cows” periods for seven years (so much for Biblical coincidences), and I was feeling exhausted.
I got the job offer in less than two weeks after I started looking, so I thought the Universe was sending me “positive signs” that I was walking in the right direction, even though something in my heart was giving me a faint warning. The warning had to do with the reasons why I had decided to become an entrepreneur in the first place, and somehow, becoming an employee again meant a betrayal to such reasons.
Anyway, I found out very soon that the market considered me to be “too old” already for the kind of positions my professional profile could get me, and that the “expedite hiring” I had experienced was just a very rare lucky strike. “Too old? I’m just 49 years, for crying out loud!” Yeah, too old, my friend. Even 40-year applicants are “in the edge” already.
Oh, well. For some years back then, I’d been telling everyone that, when I was old and retired (you know, with a lot of time still ahead of you and trying to find a new sense of purpose in life, like everyone who becomes a senior citizen), I would be a writer. Life, it seems, has its way to push you into your true vocation. I realized I was “old and retired” already –or at least the job market seemed to be thinking so– and I was feeling full of energy and ideas, crazy ideas.
So, I began to devise a whole world. It had to be somehow similar to our world, so anyone could relate to it and find themselves reflected in any of its multiple facets, but at the same time, I wanted it to be completely alien so that anyone could find an “awe moment” in every page where it was going to be described.
And I created Koiné, and the Five Breeds, and then the world map, and the cities and settlements, and the world’s history, and the characters, and the plot, and the way to tell such a monstrous thing (pun intended) in a way the reader could keep interested. How do you reveal the world that is inside your head in a way that anyone else can begin to get a glimpse of it, without feeling they’re reading a glossary of terms or a dictionary? How do you help the reader to relate to the Breeds and imagine them?
Well, I just released the first volume of seven, to wander alone in this world. Will my baby withstand the storms? Will she grow up and walk, run, fly? How far will she go? Only time will tell. Only time will tell.
