What I wrote before and after you: Fran López Castillo

What I wrote before and after you is the second novel by the Spanish accountant and author Fran López Castillo. This work written in poetic prose was published by the Red Book publishing house in 2018. Both the text and its author were unexpected, especially due to the way in which López Castillo began to disseminate his literature, which has its center in his law of most important life: "To be happy you have to be brave."

No critic has been able to define for sure what is What I wrote before and after you. No one is clear to which genre it belongs, as the novel goes through many phases and narratives. On the one hand: the semi-autobiography; on the other: poetic prose and the text of self-improvement. It contains all of this, but, at the same time, it is more than the above.

Synopsis of What I wrote before and after you

What the author says about his work

It is not always recommended that the authors themselves write the synopses or the prologues of their works. The consequence usually results in giving readers too much information, since the writer — fond of his text — approaches it from the knowledge, love and effort he has put into it. It is also common to resort to positive self-assessment, where adjectives such as "different" or "unique" are used. That conditions the public.

The downside of this practice is that it leads to disappointment for readers. Fran López Castillo talks about his work in the following terms: "I would say that it is a rare, different and unique book. Something very worked, very personal and full of messages and ideas that have been conceived with the sole purpose of stirring consciences”. Phrases like this are common places in the Self Help. Do they work? Yes, on a commercial level, they do.

The approach is a subway line

The structure of What I wrote before and after you It is built under the approach of a personal metro line: each season deals with a woman, and her importance in the life of the author. At the same time, these girls are divided into two fundamental halves, those that were before and after "L", who is the last of the stops proposed by López Castillo.

The phenomenon What I wrote before and after you

30.000 copies sold is a significant sum, especially for an author who does not publish with publishers. His books are not sold through sales pages like Amazon, nor in PDF format. So how is it possible that What I wrote before and after you reached the masses with such an impact?

When Fran López Castillo made the decision to dedicate himself to what he is really passionate about, created a blog to share their stories with readers from all over the world.

Thanks to this platform, and with the help of social networks, together with thousands of fans, What I wrote before and after you it went viral. Every day, people from many latitudes receive copies of this title, post photos with it —in which they tag the writer— and create a varied selection of reviews on Instagram or Tiktok. Most readers allude to the author's narrative style and his particular way of connecting with the public to explain this success.

Does what I wrote before and after you open the doors to a better life?

According to the author, he is not responsible for the decisions that readers make after finishing reading What I wrote before and after you. This, more than a real warning, is a phrase that indicates how sure Fran López Castillo feels that her book is about to change lives —which can happen, obviously. Whoever has not been marked or changed by reading has not read enough —. However, the assertion of fact is pretentious.

It is through thoughts like these that the author steps into the guru role. His novel is a journey, he moves through places, people and situations. In each section, he leaves a quote or an experience, which he considers important for the reader. There are works that have been written with the "interlocutor" in mind, and this is one of them.

Fran López Castillo has affirmed that Albert Espinosa —book writer as The yellow world (2008) o The night we listened (2022) - He is one of his great references, so it is not strange to find a formula similar to that of the Barcelonan author in his novel.

About the author, Francisco Manuel López

Francisco Manuel López del Castillo Rodero was born in 1991, in La Solana, Madrid, Spain. Fran felt the call of letters from a very young age. When I was a child I used to write little poems, and, one day, one of his teachers discovered it.

Later, the woman urged him to enroll in a writing program at the age of 13. However, he did not pursue a literary career until much later. While he was reaching that moment, he studied Business Administration and Management.

He did his degree at the University of Castilla-La Mancha, from which he graduated in 2015. After finishing his degree and breaking up with his girlfriend at the time, he resumed writing. To do this, he turned to social networks.

One of his first movements was to create a web page, where, gradually, he uploaded the 56 chapters belonging to his first novel, published by Libro Rojo in 2917. Soon, the blog grew in audience, and Fran López Castillo became increasingly well known.

At the same time, López Castillo worked as an accountant for a multinational, a company that he left behind to dedicate himself completely to the literary profession. Thanks to his debut work, he managed to stay in the spotlight, because, as with his second work, people have managed to feel identified with the anecdotes narrated by the author, as well as with his narrative style.

Order of publication of the books of Fran López Castillo

• Excuse me, do you have a fire? (2017);
• What I wrote before and after you (2018);
• My life gives for a series (2020)