Hello everyone and welcome back to alexjostories.com. So, as I promised today I am going to talk about something that I have worked on in the past couple of months – my first book, a collection of flash fiction titled ‘
The Creative Process
As a third-year student at the University of Kent, one module that I chose to do this year was: The Book Project. For this module, we were supposed to produce an entire book and that is how: Life Itself was born. To be honest, now that I am thinking about it, all of it started right here at alexjostories. During the time I wrote short stories for the blog, I wrote some stories which I think are my best work yet. In the beginning, I didn’t have a certain purpose for this book. All that I knew is that I wanted to do a collection of flash fiction. In my mind, I would create AlexJo Stories, but in print.
As I was writing, I discovered that all my stories were focused a certain element and that was: Emotion. Emotions which I believe everyone experiences at a certain point in their life. Throughout the stories, the readers can find repetitive elements such as music, death, pearls, diamonds, cigarettes, and smoke. Through this book, I wanted to let everyone know that no matter what happens in your life, you always need to remember that you are not alone. Life gets difficult sometimes, but we have to keep in mind that there is someone who might feel the same way! This is life itself!
Illustrations and Idea behind the Title
At first, I wanted pictures for each story. A picture that would gather all the important elements and somehow reveal the title of the story. But, as the project developed and I found myself facing some problems which I didn’t take into consideration before, I realized that I need something to connect the stories even more. Therefore, after an interesting conversation with my mom and with the help of my friend Alice who designed the illustrations, we decided to draw a minimalist road and at the end of it the sun in different positions.
Why the sun you asked? The Sun is the most powerful star and Planet Earth revolves around The Sun. The fact that the sun is yellow brought some sort of happiness on a book which mainly focused on sad emotions.
The title has a really funny story behind and it means a lot to me as the author. Music is a very important element in my writing and also in my day to day life. While writing most of these stories, I was listening to the awesome band Glass Animals. My favorite song from their second album is called: ‘Life Itself’. With no connection at all, the time I was thinking about the title of the book, I kept on thinking what these stories represent and life itself came up. After that, I made the connection between the title and the song which I absolutely love and it brought a bigger significance to everything. So, I encourage everyone to listen to their music while reading my book. It will make the
Again, thank you Alice Isacila for helping me with the illustrations and with the cover. This book looks so much better because of you. If you want to check her work you can go on her website: www.behance.net/aliceisacila
You can find the book :
Right HERE – http://www.blurb.co.uk/b/9363678-life-itself
Or HERE – http://www.blurb.com/b/9363678-life-itself
I hope you guys like the book and I will see you soon!