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Villi Asgeirsson

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Hunger City

Fan Fiction

3 October 2019 by villia Leave a Comment

I once tried my hand at fan fiction. You can see some of the results on the front page as the old posts rotate beneath my books. It was going well, I saw the world in front of my eyes, I liked Luna, the main character and the story was based on an incompleted work, giving me the opportunity to fill in the blanks.

I never finished it. Why?

It wasn’t mine. It was based on the Diamond Dogs album by David Bowie. He had intended to create a musical, based on George Orwell’s 1984. He never got the rights, so it never happened.

Hunger City was about Halloween Jack and his rollerskating gang. Bowie created a storyboard but what I’ve seen doesn’t really make a story. When Bowie died in Janyary 2016, I was devastated and work on my then work in progress, Blood and Rain, halted. I saw no point in continuing. His death delayed that book a whole year. I still needed something to get my feelings out and I started writing Hunger City.

In this story, I went with a female protagonist. She lived in a post-apocalyptic world where the Diamond Dogs (a gang – not real dogs) go after the mutants living on Burgess Hill. She finds an old book with Bowie photos and is fascinated. His world is so different from hers.

This leads her to Hunger City, where she meets all sorts of characters, including Halloween Jack himself. The city is dark, the characters shady, an unfortunate soul hanging from a dead street light, the good time girls ready to please.

One day, I stopped working on it. Didn’t know how to end it and went back to work on Blood and Rain. Never returned to Hunger City. I could have easily come up with an ending, but I never did. Now, almost four years later, it feels the moment has passed.

Fan fiction feels different. Even if this story is all mine (I never used any action from Bowie’s story board drawings), except for a few character and place names, it doesn’t feel mine. It feels like I’d have to ask Bowie’s estate or fans for permission, like I would have to be careful not to offend anyone. I’d be writing for Bowie fans, not my readers.

It is quite possible that I’ll revisit the story sometime in the future, resurrect Luna, but she would be getting her own story in her own world.

I don’t think I’ll be doing fan fiction. Ever.

Filed Under: Writing Tagged With: bowie, fan fiction, Hunger City, novel, orwell, writing

Mi libra es espanol?

30 September 2018 by villia Leave a Comment

I haven’t written in a while. Been busy working, playing guitar badly and I did start work on translating Under the Black Sand into my native Icelandic language.

A couple of days ago, a (presumably lovely) lady from Argentina offered to translate the Sand into Spanish. I read the contract (a major undertaking) and decided to go for it.

And here is a promise. I shall keep this site updated in the future. I shall let you know how the translation goes and what it’s like to have someone you’ve never met translate a novel through Babelcube.

Oh, and maybe I’ll finish the Icelandic translation myself. And finish Mont Noir, the sequel to Blood and Rain. And see if I want to finish Hunger City, a Bowie fan fiction. And maybe I want to write the two sequels I had planned for Under the Black Sand.

Whatever happens next, I’ll keep you posted.

Filed Under: Blog, Novel, Writing Tagged With: black sand, blog, blood and rain, bowie, Hunger City, novel, writing

Design Decisions

17 August 2017 by admin Leave a Comment

Here it is. A new site design. It’s WordPress and I have no idea how to use WordPress. I write novels and shoot photos. I even play with airplanes during my working hours. I don’t design websites, but here it is.

Red AuthorThe reason this site exists is to help the world find my novels. That’s it.

Feel free to leave feedback, get the novels for whatever price you like and let me know what you think.

Latest news is that I am working on two new novels, Mont Noir is a sequel to Blood and Rain, Hunger City is a sort of a fan fiction set in a post-apocalyptic world. And there are others, but we’ll talk about that later.

Cheerio!

Filed Under: Blog, Novel, Website Tagged With: blog, Hunger City, novel, photography, website, wordpress, 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

HUNGER CITY 4 – Diamond Dogs

25 March 2016 by villia Leave a Comment

Part four of the Hunger City saga is up and things are getting out of control. Hunger City is loosely based on Diamond Dogs, an album released by David Bowie in 1974.

Hunger City 4Luna crawled in the ashes and tried to get a view of the hall outside the shop. There was panic. Mutants running, screaming. Inside the shopping centre. Wasn’t that something new? They usually came in groups of three, four, maybe a few more. Killed a couple of freaks they’d run into in the streets and be gone. This was different. Luna counted nine of them and they shot anything that moved.

“Diamond Dogs are poachers and they hide behind trees. Hunt you to the ground they will, mannequins with kill appeal.”

The prophesy. David Bowie had seen this before it happened. The killers wore white masks and they hunted the mutants to the ground. It was massacre.

This was genocide.

Download the four chapters by clicking the links below. Feel free to leave reviews or suggestions.
1. Poachers Hill
2. We Are The Dead
3. Temperance Building
4. Diamond Dogs

Filed Under: Novel, Writing Tagged With: bowie, david bowie, Halloween Jack, Hunger City, novel, writing

HUNGER CITY 3 – Temperance Building

17 March 2016 by villia Leave a Comment

It’s Friday and time for another instalment of Hunger City.

Hunger City 3Luna finds herself hunted by the poachers and her life is about to change forever.
As has been said earlier, Hunger City is based on the world of Diamond Dogs, created by David Bowie in 1974, which in turn was based on 1984 by George Orwell.

Part four will be published in a week. Until then, feel free to share this, spread the word and comment on it. Say what you think.

Get the chapters here:
1. Poachers Hill
2. We Are The Dead
3. Temperance Building

Filed Under: Novel, Writing Tagged With: bowie, david bowie, Halloween Jack, Hunger City, novel, writing

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