Morning updates and ancient history

The morning today was relatively uneventful. I took the kids to the kindergarten, did about a 3k translation, talked to my and my wife's folks and prepared lunch.

I saw the first episode of Caprica yesterday. I have to say I am somewhat unsure what I think. Looks interesting so far, but reminds me waaay to much of Terminator. We'll have to see how it goes.

Now, that that's out of the way, to the main point of the post. Yesterday I was planning how to proceed with The Gathering Clouds. This is my first complete novel and it is near completion. It also has a very long history that I went over in my head yesterday, and that got me thinking a bit about how things had changed over time.

Ok. The basic plot of the novel was written by my brother about 23-25 years ago in Russian. It was barely a novella by standards of length. I, being the easily impressionable boy that I was, thought it was great and all. I should also note that my exposure to science fiction and especially fantasy was very limited at that point in time.

Anyway, towards the time we came to Israel I managed to type the novella on our old machine. After we came to Israel and some time had passed, I translated the novella into Hebrew as a part of my learning experience. I even managed to type it on a computer (though on different types of computer, on different fonts etc). I am pretty sure it was painful to read. I wouldn't know. The translation is long lost and I don't remember. Well, I was even arrogant enough to send it off to a publishing. I knew nothing about publishing, and was probably one of those manuscripts that annoy the crap out of editors. That was 18-19 years ago.

At that point, the manuscript gathered dust in my desk. When I went to college, I started writing myself. Imagine the shock of my folks who always considered me the technical side of the family (and rightly so). After writing some stories (that weren't bad but not good enough to be published) I translated the novella into English. I also translated the second book of the trilogy, that despite being almost as old, was a much more mature book. Together they were barely enough lengthwise to be called a novel. I strung them together with an interlude and that was that for a while.

After Eitan was born (about four years ago) I started looking more seriously at the novel. I finally realized that despite some nice ideas it was extremely undercooked. I rewrote it on a massive scale, basically turning it into what it is today (though I later added another 30k words). At that point I found AbsoluteWrite and really dug deep into the novel. Today it stands before the last round of editing and being sent out. Though there are similarities with the original, it is mostly a new book. I had kept my brother's name together with mine on the byline, though it is by all accounts my novel.

This novel is an interesting exhibit of changes I underwent in my life and how I came to be the man I am today. It is always interesting for me to add another page to that book.