Kate on the Kindle

I am very pleased to announce that after only a mere eight years in development, the novella Kate is available for purchase on the Kindle. The process has been rather long and difficult but well worth it.

It all started with an idea that I had while standing on a porch. I was
involved in a relationship at the time and I was going to visit the
person and I had just rang the doorbell when suddenly the image came
into my mind of a man staring at the clouds above him while waiting for
the light to change in New York City.

I started writing not a long time afterward. After a mere two years, I had written several chapters but kept on stalling on writing more. While I was staying at the Ohr Somayach yeshiva in Monsey, NY, I decided to write the outline for the book and made the decision to keep it to exactly eighteen chapters. Eighteen is a significant number in the Jewish religion because the numerological value of the word chai, which means life in Hebrew, is eighteen and I wanted the book to be full of life.

At some point I decided that the best way to push myself to continue writing the novella would be to publish it chapter by chapter on Go Inside Magazine. The plan was originally to publish one chapter per month – it would then be done within 18 months. In actuality, the first chapter was published in July of 2002 and the last chapter was published in February of 2005. What has happened in the four years that have passed since then?

For starters, there has been a lot of procrastination. Then you have the fact that I kept on changing my mind about what I wanted to do in terms of how I was going to have it published. I realized that it was far too short to be published by a major publisher on paper with ink, so I thought I would have to expand it and make it a lot longer. Unfortunately (or fortunately?), the more I played with it, the more I realized that I liked it just the way it was.

Don’t get me wrong – a lot of writing went into the rewriting of the book. The book that is available for the Kindle is quite different than the book that was originally published on Go Inside Magazine. I changed my mind about the way a few things happened, for one. I nearly cut a few things out entirely. I added a few sections, including the first few paragraphs of the book.

Here’s the official blurp from the Amazon.com Kindle page:

Product Description
While Jean-Michel Pinot attempts to find some semblance of love in New York, Felix Twickson just wants to go back to living a human life complete with feeling that there’s a reason to get up every morning. Sandy, one of Felix’s best friends who is finally getting over it, finds herself entangled in a relationship she isn’t even sure she can handle.

A followup story of sorts to a play that has yet to be produced.

This was originally published in serial format for Go Inside Magazine – http://www.goinside.com. It was revised and expanded upon for the Kindle version.

When the Kindle was announced, I felt that I finally had a winner. For a really long time I wanted to publish it through Amazon’s BookSurge program so that I would have a hard copy of it available as well – that may eventually happen. For now, the book is beautifully available exclusively for the Kindle.

The best thing is that if you have a Kindle, you can read the first three chapters for free by downloading the sample of the book.