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Villi Asgeirsson

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Is it possible?

3 January 2021 by villia 2 Comments

The decision to dedicate 2021 to short fiction wasn’t taken a long time ago. It was two days before Christmas and I was aimlessly browsing the web. Came across a list of 52 short story concepts on Tumblr and it made me think. What if…?

I have written 2-3 shorts in my entire life. 4-5 if you include short film scripts that could potentially be adapted to stories. Writing 52 in as many weeks seems like a challenge destined to fail. So, why not?

I immediately started working on ideas. The concepts the Tumblr list presented me with start with the following.

A story entitled “A New Beginning”.
A story about rising to a challenge.
A retelling of a fairytale.
A story about three siblings.
A story set in London.
A story about finding something that has been lost.
A story about a journey.
A story set during a war.

Fairly vague concepts. I really have to come up with the stories myself. What this list does is give me a starting point. It will prevent me from writing the same story time and time again. So, what do we have so far?

A New Beginning is finished and will be published next Friday. The story about a challenge is written, I just need to edit it a bit. The fairytale? I dabbled in Little Red Riding Hood, Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty, but ultimately settled on Norse Mythology where Mjölnir, Thor’s hammer, is stolen by the Jotnar and must be brought back. I’ve just started that one. Three siblings, I’m thinking about the great flood in the Netherlands in January 1953 but haven’t come up with a concept. That may change, it may become something entirely different. London, lost and journey, I have no idea. A story set during a war, I have an idea of what I want to do there but haven’t written anything yet.

None of this existed prior to 22 December 2020.

So you see, this really is 52 stories in 52 weeks. I don’t have anything laying around that I can use. This year will see my typing a lot, struggling to write more than I’ve ever done. Life is bound to get in the way.

Here is hoping someone will discover this project and cheer me on. I think I’ll need it.

Look out for A New Beginning coming Friday.

Filed Under: Blog, Personal, Writing Tagged With: 2021, 52 week challenge, short stories, writing

52 Moments

1 January 2021 by villia Leave a Comment

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

2020 was a drag. Many say the worst year ever and that may be true for some, but there have been worse years in history. I have had worse years. 2020 was still a drag and I can’t wait to go out without a facemask, go on holiday, meet the family… heck, just go sit in a café with my laptop and type while enjoying a double espresso.

It’s the simple things in life I miss.

So… simple things. I haven’t written much lately. There was going to be a novel in 2020, but it all seemed so pointless, seeing what was going on. I am still not ready to dedicate myself to a novel, even if I have one almost done. Time to simplify one’s life.

2021 will be a year of great triumph or a massive failure. I have dedicated myself to writing one short story every week. Really short and simple stories, 1000 words or thereabouts. But every week. A new story. No serials, no blog posts, but proper stories. Moments in time of various characters. Every week.

I’m not a betting kind of type but if I was going to put money on this, I’d say it’ll fail. It’s a New Year’s Resolution and we’ll just have to see if it survives January.

So, there we have it. 2020 was a drag, 2021 will hopefully be better for us all. Look out for the first story on the 8th. It’ll be called A New Beginning and it really takes us to the very beginning of time… if you believe in that sort of thing.

Cheerio!

Filed Under: Blog, Novel, Personal, Writing Tagged With: blog, short stories, writing

It’s (not) All About the Money

6 January 2020 by villia Leave a Comment

I have decided to stop charging for my books.

Writing is a passion. Certainly in the beginning, before you build an audience. You write because there are voices, people and stories in your head that want to get out into the world.

If you’re lucky, you sell a million books and can make a living from your passion. I never reached that. I’m not sure if it’s a good thing or not. I remember when I started making films and videos for a living, my hobby became a source of income and I was forced to make more videos and films. The magic was gone.

Would that have happened in writing? I’m not sure. Writing involves less people and I can do whatever I please. This probably changes as you hit a nerve and build an audience and have to please them in some way. But as a hobby writer without an audience to speak of, I could write whatever I wanted. It remained fun up until the end.

My first novel dealt with an Icelandic business man entangled in seemingly supernatural events. It was a story that just came into being, I was just there to write it. My second dealt with the Spanish Civil War because I was interested in that at the time. My third (unpublished) took a look at life in Amsterdam in the final year before World War Two broke out.

Recently, I created a medeaval world where the gods interfere with the lives of the people, where the church and king try to retain power and the kids try to break out of their routine lives, either by joining the army or planning a revolt against the gods and king. I never finished that.

Those are all wildly different projects. I’m not sure if it’s because my interests are all over the place (they are) or if I haven’t found my voice or niche. Knowing myself, once I’d found my niche, I would try to break out of it.

There is a problem. I don’t have the time to explore my voice, my audience or thoughts in general. A full time job, family and the usual stuff leaves little time to write. That’s why it takes three years to write novels, why I don’t have time to properly publish them. It is the reason why I finish a draft and then leave it for a year or more until looking at it again. Blood and Rain was as good as ready in early 2016 but was published a year later. Mont Noir, the Amsterdam based novel, could have been published in 2018, but… you get it.

Up until now, I have sold my books at low prices. I’m not in it for the money and they don’t sell enough to make a difference to my finances. So, I came to a conclusion.

From today, all my books will be free. They will cost you nothing. I don’t care if I earn €2.99 per book or nothing at all. My job pays me, so my books don’t have to.

If you always wanted to read my novels but never had the money, now is the chance. The price has been implemented at Smashwords and should trickle to other retailers in the coming hours.

Thanks for your support.

Filed Under: Blog, Novel, Personal, Promotions, Writing Tagged With: black sand, blood and rain, free, free books, promotions, undir svörtum sandi, writing

Becoming an Author

20 February 2017 by villia Leave a Comment

An overnight success is years in the making. I’m not saying I’m a successful author. Not in the commercial sense. I may have sold a few hundred copies of Under the Black Sand, but that is not commercial success. Blood and Rain is coming in just under two weeks and it may sell 10 copies. I have no idea.

I firmly believe though that I am a successful author. I have finished two novels. It is an achievement in itself, even if nobody was ever to read them. Thousands, possibly millions, of people dream of writing a novel but never pull it off. Never finish the task. I have done it twice. But I wasn’t really planning to become an author. Never thought I had the patience and the stamina to pull it off. So where did it start?

As a child, I wrote simple stories. I wrote half a novel in my twenties. Life is a Bitch. It was simplistic, naive, ultimately abandoned. As I entered my thirties, I wrote a novel called Plastic. It’s not horrible, but it’s not very good. Abandoned again.

I attended film school shortly thereafter. Wrote and directed a short film, The Small Hours. It was simple, the story tight, a horrible and surprising ending. Maybe I should adapt it into a short story some day. 2006 saw me writing and directing another short. Black Sand. I made the mistake of trying to create an epic short. I misunderstood the format, tried to cramp too much into the small space. A 20 minute movie gives you too little time to tell an epic story and a 20 minute short is too long.

Under the Black Sand - movie screenplay
Under the Black Sand – movie screenplay

There was more to Black Sand than could be told in a short film or story. After resigning to the fact that the film had failed the simplicity test, I did what I should have done from the start. I fleshed it out and adapted it into a feature film screenplay. My first notes date from January 2007 and the first draft of the screenplay was finished in July that same year. By April 2008, I had replaced the opening scene with the “film noir” murder scene that opens the novel. As 2008 came to a close, I had a solid version of the movie on paper. In late summer and autumn 2008, a couple of production companies in Iceland had expressed interest and were waiting for me to deliver a final draft.

October 2008 changed everything. The economy crashed and funds dried up. Slowly, they all pulled out. There would be no money available to risk making this movie. They were struggling and bigger names obviously would take preference.

I kept working on the screenplay and the last version is dated 18 May 2009. As the production companies had done earlier, I abandoned the story.

Somewhere around the beginning of 2010, I met a film director. He read the screenplay, liked it, told me the dialogue was more natural than most Icelandic works before it and the story was deep, well developed and intriguing. However, he confirmed that there was no money. He’d just finished his debut feature, financed by himself and other non-industry people and companies. He told me to adapt my story into a novel. It was a story that needed to be read and would fit the novel format perfectly. And having a novel made the making of a movie more likely.

I wasn’t sure. I had never finished a novel and didn’t believe I could pull it off. But I didn’t have a choice if I wanted the story to be told.

Under the Black Sand
Under the Black Sand

First treatment for the novel was drafted in April 2010. I started writing it in Icelandic but gave up. Didn’t find myself in it, the language was getting in my way. I quickly switched to English and slaved on. I copied and pasted the screenplay into Apple Pages and wrote up the scenes, one by one. It was a turbulent time in my life and it took a while before the work was finished. Writing long form in a word processor is tough, but I was saved by a new app. I imported the draft into Scrivener in 2011 and the writing process took off. The first draft is dated 29 March 2012. April saw a new draft and on my birthday, 10 May 2012 I had a final draft.

I had a few paperbacks printed and a few people read it. A lot of useful feedback helped me shape the story in the weeks and months following that draft. One suggestion caused me a huge headache. Somewhere along the way, I had made the decision to move the setting of the story from Iceland to Scotland. I felt stupid writing an Icelandic story in English and I was fascinated by being able to include burning witches and castles. One of the readers asked why I’d done this. It’s an Icelandic story and should be set in Iceland.

I resisted. I’d spent years on this thing and really didn’t feel like going back to it. But he was right and I knew it. Deep down inside I knew I’d made a mistake when changing the setting. So I went back to work.

A year later, in May 2013, Under the Black Sand was completed and my first novel was published. It was a long time in the making, mainly due to the many detours, but I was happy with it. Some say it’s a fairly hard read, although a satisfying one. Others have completely lost themselves in it and absolutely loved it.

It’s a bit odd, but after the publishing, I mostly abandoned the writing “career”. Under the Black Sand sat on Amazon and trickled onto a few Kindles. A couple of reviews were posted and I didn’t notice them until they were pointed out to me. They inspired me to get back to writing.

Blood and Rain - paperback cover
Blood and Rain – paperback cover

A year after Under the Black Sand, I had a rough draft of a new novel. Blood and Rain was inspired by a short film from 2011 (I may want to adapt The Girl from Nowhere into a short story). I spent a good year writing, polishing and by late 2015, I was done. Again a few readers read it, gave good feedback and again one reader asked a critical question. A question that made me rethink the last 3-4 chapters. The final draft was ready in early January 2016.

Something happened on the day he died. I have been a huge Bowie fan for decades. When he died, in January 2016, I put Blood and Rain down and had no desire to continue. It took 10-11 months to get back to it. By January 2017, the final draft was done and ready to be published.

Now that we are on the eve of Blood and Rain’s publishing, I’m wondering what to do next. I have no aspirations to make a movie, but won’t object if someone wants to adapt one of my novels. But writing books has grabbed me by the horns and that’s where I’m going from here.

So, what’s next? I have no idea. I have an idea for a sequel to Blood and Rain. I have already outlined potential series based on Under the Blacks Sand. I have already written about 70% of a novella called Hunger City, a dystopian story set in the world David Bowie created on his Diamond Dogs album. And maybe I’ll do something entirely different.

One thing is certain. I will write a third novel. I am a successful writer, whether anyone notices or not.

Blood and Rain is available on 3 March 2017

Filed Under: Film, Novel, Personal, Thoughts, Writing Tagged With: black sand, blood and rain, bowie, david bowie, film, Hunger City, novel, personal, publishing, scrivener, thoughts, writing

Every Writer has a Voice

14 February 2017 by villia Leave a Comment

I was at work last night when a colleague asked if I already had the paperback of the new novel. It won’t come out for another two weeks, but I have my first print run. She took it, and after complimenting the cover design and format of the book, opened it on a random page and started reading.

‘This is so you,’ she said and laughed. And I was reminded of something I read a long time ago. All the books that have to be written already exist. All the stories in the world have already been told. But they have never been told with your words, your voice. Nobody has taken a situation and dissected it the way you would.

Blood and Rain - paperback cover
Blood and Rain – paperback cover

And that is why we write. Because our unique vision will shine a different light on an old subject. We will open people’s eyes and show them ordinary things from a perspective that is new to them. We will make them think in a way they haven’t thought before. Stretch their minds, broaden their vision, their understanding of the world.

And so it is important that our voices get heard, our words get read. We may be little more than creatures made of organic matter, but our memories and understanding of the world around us make us into individuals. Our opinions and actions make us who we are.

Being an author and influencing the way people think and see the world is a privilege and we should treat it with respect. We must, at all times, treat our readers with respect and always try to show them the world in a new light.

My new novel, Blood and Rain, will be published on 3 March 2017. It can be preordered from major online vendors already.

Filed Under: Novel, Personal, Thoughts, Writing Tagged With: blood and rain, novel, personal, thoughts, writing

A Year in the Life

12 September 2016 by villia Leave a Comment

It’s been a year since I completed the first draft. As of 12 September 2015, Blood and Rain existed. The novel was scheduled to be published in spring 2016, but things happened.

Blood and Rain - concept cover
Blood and Rain – concept cover

First, the website went down and my hosting company killed the backup. This is why links to old blog posts on my social media sites are broken. It took a few weeks to fight them, but I lost. My blog was gone. I made some effort to salvage the site, but it’s still in ruins. Never set up a site with FatCow. Never. Absolutely don’t.

Then Bowie died on the day my review copies were returned. He was my idol, someone I looked to for inspiration. I spent the next few weeks clearing out the attic, going through my Bowie collection and disappearing into a dark world that was mine and mine only. Except when I needed to work, do groceries and things. Creativity wasn’t there, my story seemed irrelevant.

Then I created a book of Bowie lyrics for a closed group on Facebook. I also wrote a novella based on his album, Diamond Dogs. Got half way through it. I need to finish that project as well. It was well on its way to become an interesting novella.

And I was busy working with the Pirate Party in Iceland in the weeks before the pre-elections. My work there is done. Elections are at the end of October and it looks like it may turn out extremely well for the party.

A year flies by in an instant. It is interesting though, that I finished the final draft of Blood and Rain two days ago. Pretty much a year after finishing the first draft.

And so here we are. Now it’s time for a cover design and finding the best way to publish the novel. I leave you with a cover idea I coughed up at the time.

It’s good to be back.

Filed Under: Novel, Personal, Politics, Writing Tagged With: blood and rain, bowie, david bowie, novel, politics, website, writing

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