Who am I?

A short introduction to the Longo part of the Review...

Who am I? That is a question that we should all ask ourselves now and again.

I write these words to give you a quick introduction of myself. I’d like for you to know where I get my perspective on the things I comment on. Where are my opinions coming from? How did I get to this point, and why did I decide to create this newsletter?

I am a writer.

Well, first, I was a software developer. An activity I started practicing when I was 12 years old and which I was self-taught. I used to read anything I could get my hands on about software development. Just a bit over a year and a half before I started programming, I started reading. I was ten years old when I found my passion for reading. This, combined with my interest in computers, led me to read a lot of fiction and technical books.

Fast forward 13 years, and I was a software development manager at a tech startup before starting companies received that moniker. The year was 1995, and I was writing my first actual book. I had tried my hand at writing fiction, but I always thought everything I’d written was crap. My low opinion on the technical material available in Portuguese led me to invite a friend to write a technical book. Took me a while, but I ended up writing 10 books along with Ronaldo Smith Jr., and an additional 4 by myself.

Having a son slowed my writing production down quite a bit as it was always a secondary financial activity in my life. If it was secondary, you might wonder why I describe myself as a writer?

I was very well paid for my IT work as a manager and company director, so I never gave writing my entire focus, but I never really stopped doing it or dreaming about writing as a full-time profession. By now, I’ve written hundreds of articles, posts, and other forms of written content to fill a couple more books.

The Longo Review was created so that I could write about two of my favorite subjects in life: reading and science-fiction. As I wrote the first posts and reflected on what is happening in the world, I decided that I wanted to write about a broader range of topics, and so I created the sections or sub-newsletters, if you will.

The sections are pretty evident on what they are about, and they will allow you to choose to ignore subjects on which you have no interest. This will free me from having multiple independent publications, but still allow anyone that subscribes to filter out the topics that aren’t of interest for them.

I started my writing journey when I was 24 years old. Now, I am 50 and soon to be fifty one. It has been a long journey, but one that I hope is only beginning. I invite you to come along for the ride.

In the course of my posting, I will explore the paths of writing excellent science fiction books and the events that are currently happening in the world, and how I see their potential impact on our future and our children’s future.