Blue Company

A novel told in email. Readers subscribed and received at least one e-mail per day for the month of May 2002. Blue Company is part one of a two part fiction; the second part is "Kind of Blue" by Scott Rettberg. Blue Company's e-mails are from a young marketing guy, Berto, who has gotten a really bad job transfer. He's been transferred to Italy, which is great, but he's also been transferred to the 14th century, which is dangerous and uncomfortable. The e-mails are nominally addressed to a woman Berto met shortly before his departure, and as he courts her we learn the story of his travels with a small group of 21st century corporate mercenaries called the "Blue Company" toward a fateful rendezvous beyond Milan. The e-mails are illustrated by hand since, of course, there were no cameras in the late middle ages.