Vacation

Very early morning, Saturday the 24th, and I’m off to a warmer place. I’m going on a week’s vacation to Gran Canaria, and I’m mostly planning on just enjoying myself. But know me, I probably will be working on some stories as well, both the Sword Woman’s Kin and other projects. But that is for enjoyment only, most of all this is a vacation. And the blog will go quite for a while.

Projects

I handed in a first draft of book number 11 to the publisher on Monday. As always it was a very good feeling, and I really believe this is a good book, with a very exciting ending. I must admit, I’m not the best writer when it comes to the so-called “cliffhangers”. But with book number 11 I felt that I really got the hang of this, and whilst working on book number 11 a lot of the story for book number 12 has also come to me. For a moment I considered going directly from book number 11 to writing book number 12, but now I’ve found another project to work on.

A few weeks back I suddenly, out of the blue, came up with a new idea for a new series. For now I’m very much in the research part of this project; writing down lots of ideas, thinking about the characters and the story and so on – so wetter or not this is going to happen, is a bit early to say. And even if I should come up with what I believe is a good idea, I might not be able to find a publisher who believes that it is as well. This is why I won’t say much else about the project right now. Perhaps I will give you a little more information when I’ve written a first book in the series and have an idea myself wetter this is any good or not.

Besides this I’m mostly occupied with my one week vacation starting on Saturday the 24th. I’m heading to a place a lot warmer than Norway, and I think it will be excellent.

More book 11

Book number 11 is well under way, and it seems to be a very exciting book. More elements have come into the story while I’ve been writing it than I anticipated before I started, and it’s always interesting when that happens. It is almost like reading a book myself for the first time, when the surprising elements suddenly turn up. 

What I wrote in the blog the other day, about the findings in Denmark that seem to indicate that the Vikings sacrificed humans has really inspired me. And I am now pretty sure that there will be something about this in book number 12. The story in book number 11 seems to be longer than I predicted, and this has given me lots of inspiration and further details for book number 12. I already have a very detailed synopsis for this book now, but who knows, there might be surprising elements for me in this one as well. 

I do have a lot of fun though, and the writing goes very well.
This weekend I’m off to a friend’s 40th birthday, and I’m looking forward to getting out of my cave for a little while.

The Vikings sacrified humans

It is always very interesting when I find articles in the media about the Viking Age. Today there’s an article in the Norwegian newspaper Dagbladet about how evidence is now found that Danish Vikings sacrificed humans around year 1000. This has of course immediately inspired new stories in my mind. I am right now working on book number 11, and this story is pretty much finished, so it won’t be in this book that I use this new fact. But I’m pretty sure it will come up in one of my later books.

Last night I watched a program on National Geographic Channel called Barbarians. This is a TV-series about people who are traditionally viewed as barbarians, but when studied closer it is found that they are more highly evolved than anyone would have thought. And the program last night was about Vikings.

Book 11

I am these days editing book 10, and I’m writing a first draft of book number 11. A fairly detailed synopsis of book number 11 is ready, but I need to do a quite a bit of reading before I do the actual writing. Book 11 will involve Sami people, and I must admit I don’t know much about the Sami people, their culture and their history. I have borrowed some books at the library, and slowly I’m learning something.

What I have found out is that there are even fewer written sources about how the Sami lived during the Viking Age, than it is about the Vikings. This gives some freedom to a writer who’s making up stories about that time, but at the same time it means that there are a lot of traps to fall into. I have earlier mentioned that I want my books to be as historically correct as possible. I am very much aware that some times I do miss the target a little bit, but I do my best to not miss it completely. Thus, I does cause me some anxiety to mix the Sami, their religion, culture and history into book 11, but my story seems to demand it – so I’ll just have to keep reading and hope that the final result will be pretty much correct.

Happy New Year

I celebrated the New Year with family and friends yesterday, and it was a very happy and fun event. I have to admit I am a bit tired today, and I’m taking the day off from everything. Tomorrow though I’ll return to work, and will continue with the translation of my first two books from Norwegian to English. I will also have to start thinking about book number 11. I have a synopsis ready for the book, but it’s not very detailed yet so I will have to spend some more time doing research and thinking about it before I start the actual writing. 

2008 was a very exciting and interesting year for me, and I have big hopes and expectations for 2009 as well.

Happy new year everybody!