Gabriel García Márquez has been a journalist and fiction writer all his life, and the two genres have intertwined throughout his career. Raymond L. Williams pointedly explains that “journalism has been a constant presence in García Márquez's literary career and personal biography. García Márquez the novelist has gained far more from journalism than just 'contact with reality'. A reading of his journalistic writings during this period, in fact, shows a writer experimenting with a variety of styles, techniques, and genres. Both the enormous volume of García Márquez's journalism and its intimate relationship to his fiction make his journalistic writings essential to a complete study of this work.” / The connection between García Márquez's fiction and his non-fiction is represented by the refrito, or follow-up story, which provides information discovered or events happening after the publication of the original story. The fact that the follow-up story builds upon an already published story often gives it a pejorative connotation and lowly status among journalists. The intersection of his fiction and non-fiction starts during the investigative reporting phase of his work for El Espectador in Bogotá, Colombia in 1954-5. García Márquez wrote three series of follow-up stories in which his writing and narrative technique start to develop.