A walk “Through the Mist”

This is a walk down a memory lane, a beautiful lane for me!

Life keeps surprising us when we least expect it!

And becoming associated with “Through the Mist” was one such accident!

The history of the accident goes like this:

Not long ago, yet, almost 3 years back, out of the blue, I was asked by Jithin, the Trablogger, and without knowing the impact, I accepted to be the co-ordinator / book designer / editor of a new project.

My journey into his book’s Acknowledgements page was even more accidental and that’s what has led to this. He was having the idea of taking the Flash Fiction Chain, an feature he had in his blog to the next level. The working of Flash Fiction is, A part of story triggered by an image, and that story is evolved by a chain of authors.

So the idea mixed up with a book evolved into this: A book of five stories, written by five authors. So the Flash Fiction Chain grew up to Dream Chasing Chain, the initial name of this project.

A team of Five authors were hunted in blogosphere and the team finalised was:

Abirami
Adhithya
Nimitha
Rupali
Sona

So the idea behind the book was to: One of them starts each story, with the same image as their base, another builds it, another tighten the plots, another explain the knots and yet another ties off the knots! Not necessarily in that order or exclusively. Each of them takes part of each such process! And brings together one single story! Alas, the book is made of five such stories!

What made it more interesting?!

The team.. They range from different age groups, cultural backgrounds, different native-languages, many more differences, united by the single idea of “Writing”. And the difference continues therein too. Though all of them are very good fiction writers, as it turned out to be, they weren’t writing fiction forever. Their preferred mode of writing too varied from poetry, prose, short notes, ramblings, listicles and what not!

A complete set of strangers, set out to work together. A picture clicked by Jithin was finalised as the core theme that stings together all the stories. The team of five authors, set out to create symphony out of chaos. This was the rhythm the music notes spun out to..

The Team of Authors:

Story	Theme	Part 1	Part 2	Part 3	Part 4	Part 5
A Middle-Class Story	Humor	Nimitha	Abirami	Sona	Adhithya	Rupali
A Strange Life	Fantasy	Abirami	Rupali	Adhithya	Nimitha	Sona
Languish in Love	Romance	Adhithya	Sona	Rupali	Abirami	Nimitha
The Lone Man	Horror	Rupali	Nimitha	Abirami	Sona	Adhithya
Turn of the Tides	Experimental	Sona	Adhithya	Nimitha	Rupali	Abirami

(Of course, the names were decided after writing the story.)

There was a very scarce communication between them and I was the one, privileged to keep track of the progress of the story and be the common point of contact for all of them, till the point of the stories first draft is completed!

None of them knew what happened to the characters they have created, nor did they take it up in the way the previous author has had in mind. Yes, I asked them and I can assure you that, none of them had expected what was coming up next.

Yet, the basic rule of sticking to the theme for each story was strictly adhered to and each story’s voice is different and yet every one picked up the tu(o)ne and built upon those lines.

It seems to be a fairly simple process, from this end. But the journey through was a wonderful experience and watching the story grow part by part was an amazing experience, to be experienced.

Amazingly, the whole process of writing was completed within around a month. The writers did keep up to their timelines and for the maximum part, their initial story itself made it to the book. [This might also be attributed to the admiration of the writings as such or lack of skills or the knowledge of the lazy-bone editor of the book. Oh, wait, That’s ME! Hmm.. Maybe, I totally accept those facts 😉 But I still believe that the initial form is better than what “I” could have done. Maybe, a better editor knows what to do.]

And yes, I did move around my lazy-ass once in awhile to make sure the stories hasn’t wandered from the broad path and I proudly accept that I loved the formatting part of the book. I take full credit for it and am so happy for having such a complete freedom and trust [or is it for lack of getting a better designer?! I don’t think that would be the case and I don’t want to know, if it is 😉 ]

Then came the process of tying the loose ends of drafts into a book. That’s when the team of strangers evolved into friends. The discussions on the name for the stories (suggested by the finisher of the story and approved by the rest) and the name for the book, which took long hours of considering various factors and we ended up with “Through the Mist.”

Later, the wait for ISBN took very long with the previous system of approval by post. And luckily for us, they updated it to online system and fast approvals, by the time we have lost our patience for waiting for it and went ahead with printing.

At last, everything fell into place and the shout-out to public was made last year!

There are many souls in each of our lives to be thankful for and the lessons learnt are itched deeper into my soul than most other lessons learnt in life. The transition from a draft to book, takes along with it, a little soul of each of the members.

For me, personally, the transition of the process is lot more! And I thank you all, my teammates, blogger friends and every reader of my words.. Thank you!

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We started selling the paperback here and Kindle edition is available in Amazon.

The books are still selling and are the results worth this effort?
Reviews will be updated soon!

Before that, Would you like to judge it for yourself?