In general, books about the process of writing concern themselves with how the author might find time to write or the development of characters or tricks about how to show rather than tell the story. In other words, this type of book usually deals with methodology. Facundo Raganato’s book The Author ~ or ~ The Characters’ Short Living Story addresses the writing process from a very different point of view. Raganato writes himself into the story as The Author and interacts with his characters even as the story and the characters themselves are developing. In his introduction, he refers to his book as an “improvisation,” declaring it random and “flowing with the wind.”
 

Raganato’s story develops slowly, beginning with nothingness, growing to gray stones, then to a golden oil lamp. His six characters, three males and three females, appear out of the nothingness as though born fully grown in the light of the oil lamp in which “their eyes began to see” as they are “thinking and trying to remember.” This is an intriguing introduction, which serves to both draw in and rebuff the reader at the same time.