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I am not a great author but I began writing 5 years ago. I've tried and stopped writing a dozen different books, none really getting over 30 or so pages... most stopped before 10, except one.
It was and has tentatively been called 14k. I changed the title easily two dozen times but I kept going back to that title, the first title. I have 94 pages at present, size 12 font, single spaced in MS word. I hope someday to publish it, though I am an amateur writer and know it is likely to never occur. I enjoyed writing it. Do not let my fairly poor spelling and awful grammar on Apolyton fool you, there is a big difference between posting posts here without reading them once and actual writing.
The book started at one particularly crappy retail job I had in a “big box” store which was always empty due to our vastly superior competition across the street. I started writing on my first day on napkins from the break room and did that for 2 days. The idea really stuck and it fell out of me, I started bringing folded pieces of paper with me to work and writing during idle moments. The store was quite literally always empty so my boss did not know what I was doing, he must of thought I was taking inventory or something along those lines. After my fourth day writing by hand, the idea flushed out of me like a deluge and I wrote 20 pages in one sitting at my computer.
The premise of my book is this: A man from northern turkey circa 14,000 years ago survives till today, he writes about his experiences in life, how the world has changed, his perspective on it etc, the perspective starts at the beginning of his life but gradually the timeframe jumps around a bit. This is the exact same date as the movie. I set it for 14,000 years ago because that is when the Caspian sea and the black sea may have flooded, which may be the origin of the flood myth. It was also a convenient plot device to wipe out any technological advancement if any societies in northern turkey advanced to say a few generations short of pre-Mesopotamian levels of technology.
One of the interesting hooks in the book is that human kind advanced socially and technologically faster then any originally thought, no not atlantis, but to a society with advanced organized agriculture 14,000 years ago, something humans did not have then. Part of it is a grand exercise in "what if" history. What if certain circumstances occurred to spur social organization and agricultural development, what would it have looked like to someone who lived through it?
No magic, no superpowers, no aliens, the protagonist is not the chosen one, for some reason he simply stopped aging and was lucky enough to not die from accidents or disease. No, he is not an angsty bastard either, he is "fairly" normally as you might expect someone who went on his odd journey to be. If anyone has read Time Enough For Love, in some ways he resembles the protagonist from that book, though I did not read that book for the first time till last year. He does not meet famous historic figures anymore then you would expect your average John Q Public to.
I started writing it when I was perturbed that people thought our ancestors were all animal like savages when in reality, the only big difference between us and them is that we stand on their shoulders and benefit from many, many generations of discovery. A big theme in the book is how the protagonist discovers reason, shown gradually as he begins to analyze the world around him.
The protagonist describes firsthand how he witnesses the creation of the first large society and what lead to it. He describes firsthand the discovery of copper smelting, domestication of some animals, the plow, irrigation, how religion and social customs change over time. All of this is from the perspective of a person from that time but gradually his analysis becomes more reasoned and rationale and occasionally the protagonist buts in, from his perspective today, commenting about what he and his tribe thought then. I am really proud of how it has turned out, it is the best thing I have ever written.
I never really planned to leave the time period of 12,000-8,000 B.C., I have no real intention of extending the books time period to the present day, though some of the commentary of the protagonist is clearly written from the present day.
I even time stamped it in my gmail account a few times, not that I really expected anyone to try to steal it.
I posted snippets of it on a few amateur author message boards and got positive feedback over the years.
I doubt that my idea was literally stolen, they must of came to the same idea on their own but GRRRR!
I doubt I could ever really get it published but if I somehow did, it will appear I ripped off the plot of this damn movie!
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