Eight years ago, computer scientist, software engineer and UCLA adjunct professor Carey Nachenberg began his longest project yet. Today, he has some advice he said he wishes he’d known from the start.
“Take it one word at a time,” Nachenberg said. “Write a paragraph, write a sentence, write a word. You run a marathon one step at a time.”
“The Florentine Deception,” Nachenberg’s first writing effort, is a 334-page techno thriller novel. Self-published by Nachenberg, the book is currently for sale online on Amazon.com, as well as through Barnes and Noble and his personal website.
All proceeds from its sale will be donated to UCLA UniCamp, KIPP, NPower and other charities focused on development and education for youth and the elderly.
The core story centers around Alex Fife, a 20-something-year-old software prodigy who has sold his start-up fresh out of college for millions, and who is now looking for something more in his life.
“Alex has basically done it all in his field, he has no idea what to do with his life, he’s lost,” Nachenberg said. “That’s his motivation in some sense – to give his life meaning.”
While rummaging through an old computer that’s to be donated to charity, Fife discovers the original owner possessed an item called the Florentine, a famous diamond. Unemployed and thirsting for adventure, Fife goes on a treasure hunt for the diamond. He soon discovers the Florentine is much more than it seems, and he’s not the only one looking for it, launching him into the intrigue and politics surrounding its hidden technological secrets.
When he first started writing the novel, Nachenberg said, he naturally modeled the main character after himself. Like Nachenberg, Fife is an avid rock climber with a penchant for adventure and an early success in the cyber security field. But as Nachenberg continued writing, Fife began to take on his own life and personality, distinct from the comfort of Nachenberg’s personal experience.
Nachenberg, like Fife, is a UCLA alumnus and is also currently a vice president and fellow at Symantec Corp., holding more than 84 patents in his name.
On-campus, Nachenberg is perhaps best recognized as a popular lecturer for Computer Science 32, one of the introductory computer science courses. He’s one of the highest rated professors on Bruinwalk.com, known for teaching for no salary, as well as for his performative teaching style, often involving prizes, inside jokes and blasting sleeping students with an infamous air gun.
Eugene Spafford, professor and cyber security researcher at Purdue University, who authored the foreword to the book, said the idea behind the dangerous technological premise is more plausible than typical science fiction. Spafford said it’s one he outlined in a research paper years ago, which he mentions in his foreword.
“The average person may think it’s improbable and far-fetched, as so far from reality as to make the book science fiction,” Spafford said. “What I wanted to convey was it really isn’t.”
Although the technological aspect of the techno thriller came naturally to Nachenberg, the novel aspect was more foreign. Having never written before, Nachenberg said the process was extremely difficult, as he was his own motivation and for the first time, he experienced major failures.
“It wasn’t the sheer enjoyment of the task that drove me to write this, it was grit,” Nachenberg said. “I wanted to see if I could finish this.”
Some nights, he said, he would write just a few sentences, or the same page over and over again. Other nights, he would write large bursts, weaving together important plot points with a creative momentum.
Nachenberg said he owes much of the book’s development to early feedback he was lucky to receive. One of the best pieces of advice came from one of the first of the several dozen agents he pitched to.
“He told me to get rid of the father character, it made the book childish,” Nachenberg said. “Nobody had told me that before. But I thought about it, and I thought: you’re absolutely right.”
From the advice, as well as from several layers of feedback from many literary agents over several years, Nachenberg went through more than 60 drafts over eight years, revising, improving and reshaping the story to create “The Florentine Deception.”
Nachenberg’s goal is to sell more than 2,000 copies, hoping to raise $10,000 for UniCamp, KIPP, NPower and other charities focused on educating youth and the elderly in leadership and technology. Previously, he has made large contributions to UniCamp, going as far as matching the donations of his students as well as helping support the development of the C.L.I.M.B program.
“From our end, financial support is one side that’s really important, so it’s so helpful to have Carey support that,” said Martin Dang, the founder of the UniCamp C.L.I.M.B program and a member of UniCamp’s program advisory board. “But the other aspect of Carey that helped me a lot was Carey’s (desire) to be a part of the community and believe in people.”
Reflecting on the rewarding but gruesome process of rewrites, rejection and finally the joy of success, Nachenberg has one final piece of advice he’d give to his younger self to get over the toughest part of writing: beginning.
“Sit down for an hour and write whatever comes to your mind,” Nachenberg said. “I would frankly not recommend writing an outline because your book will almost certainly not match it. Just sit down with some idea and start writing.”