On First Novels

Origins is the first novel I've ever written.
I'm currently writing number seventeen.

It went through several transformations/translations including from Greek to Bulgarian and then English. It was written at times with a cheap BIC ball pen, an ancient typewriter I've bought from a shady communist in an open bazaar and even some portions of it on a laptop. I've finished it ten years before it was published while still a student. Some parts I've lost due to various reasons, some of them funny -like coffee accidents, others not so much like those that were in a box I forgot in Prague after a three day holiday of which I remember very little. I've never really wanted to change it. I probably never will but not because I think it's perfect -far from it.

What it does, is reminding me of a time I was younger and probably less obnoxious. Before the beta readers and the editing, endless reworking or rewrites etc. It's as simple as that. While I evolved both as a writer and a person -hopefully- and while it's probably true I need to just toss the whole thing out a window and write it from scratch, as I always preach it's the safer and advised thing to do - I don't want to :)

It's available for free and gotten a fair share of pounding from some reviewers/readers that have pointed at times its many shortcomings. I know them all, believe me. I respect the criticism even if it targets a different writer.  I'm elated with everyone that has loved it, or read it with an open mind.

But as everyone that has ever written anything at some point in his life will realize, a part of my younger self lives in it, a part we all lose when we grow up or get better. Flawed art isn't a decease. It's just art that needs more work done. Perfection is always subjective as much as elusive. Maybe I'll do a revision at some point if I feel like it but until then it'll stay like it is, a simple free for all story.

Those that have mustered the small patience its needed to finish it are hopefully rewarded moving on to the more mature sequels I've written a good ten years later. Writers evolve, stories evolve. Eventually, life moves us all forward.