Villi Asgeirsson

Drafting ideas...

writing

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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!

It’s (not) All About the Money

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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.

How do I write?

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Someone asked what my process of writing novels was. Here is what I said. This how you manage to keep track of 60-90.000 words without getting lost.

I first come up with an idea. Why do I want to write this story. Without an idea, you won’t come very far and you’ll get lost. A novel without an idea or message won’t work, in my opinion.

Then I come up with place and time. My first two novels were Iceland, present time and Barcelona 1937. My third, still in progress, will take place in Amsterdam in 1939. Place and time is important as it dictated what kind of characters you have and how you bring your idea across to the reader.

The comes the fun part. Research. I dive into the world I’m about to create. For Blood and Rain, I read books and watched documentaries on the Spanish Civil War, for Mont Noir, I did the same for Amsterdam in the months leading up to the Second World War.

Only then do I create characters to tell the story. 

When I have the place, time and major characters in place, I use Save the Cat or similar to roughly plot the story. This helps me avoid slow or boring mid-section and tie the end to the beginning. 

Then I write the first draft. I don’t worry too much about lame dialogue or plot holes. If I see them, I make note of them and fix them in draft 2. Between draft 1 and 2, I look at what isn’t working and come up with solutions and implement those in draft 2. 

It is not uncommon to see characters go their own way and that creates plot holes as they refuse to follow the outline. Therefore, draft 2 becomes a compromise between my initial plot and where the characters want to take it. 

Draft 3 is where I polish things and tie them up. Only then do I let others read my story and give feedback. If needed, I use that to create the final and fourth draft. 

This is ideal. I try to make it happen this way but this is writing and sometimes you have to alter your strategy.

As for chapters. I let the story define those and usually split things up into chapters after I’m well into draft 2.

The software I use has enormous influence on how I work. Stories are plotted and written in Scrivener. When they’re done, I export them into Apple Pages and create a layout for the printed books. Photoshop is used for the cover. Only nag is that most eBook vendors can’t work with Pages files or Word documents exported from Pages, so I have to borrow a Windows machine for a final export. Hopefully, I’ll find a solution to that soon.

Reviews – What are they Good For?

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Nothing is more rewarding to an author than seeing their book reviewed. It doesn’t really matter all that much whether it’s positive or negative. The fact that someone took the time and effort to read your novel and write a review is humbling. Positive rewiews are better, of course. They stroke our ego and make us feel good about ourselves. Still, nobody has managed to write only stellar fiction and critical reviews help us grow as writers and create better future work for you, the reader. We must expect criticism as much as we hope for compliments.

Thankfully, Under the Black Sand enjoyed favourable reviews, only getting four or five stars. There weren’t many, but each one encouraged me to keep going. I never received any reviews for my second novel, Blood and Rain. There may be all kinds of reasons for that.
– The genre may be less popular. Everyone was mad about Nordic and Icelandic things.
– The book may be less interesting, but then, it is being translated into two languages, unlike the Black Sand.
– I didn’t push it like the first.

Maybe I should have. I love the setting and some of my favourite characters are in it. Celestina definitely has the best character introduction in any of my stories.

Here is hoping Undir Svörtum Sandi will be reviewed when it comes out in just under two weeks. It will encourage me to write more, maybe in my native language, and it will tell me if I’m doing things well or need to improve in certain areas.

Below are some of the reviews placed for Under the Black Sand.

★★★★★ – Amazon
A unique story in a unique environment.
21 January 2015 – A story unlike other love stories. Contains all the aspects that makes you want to keep on reading (power, lust, love and well described feelings and sceneries). Movie material.

★★★★★ – Amazon UK
Unusual fast moving story
28 May 2014 – I bought this book as I like stories based in Iceland. It sat in my ‘wish list’ for ages as I was unsure whether or not to buy. There were no reviews to guide me. However I am so happy that I did in the end purchase it.

This fast moving story is about a forceful businessman, set in todays post 2008 bank collapse Iceland, trying to get a large project passed a political and environmental resistance to his plan. As the story develops you get flashbacks to the past, his past, which eventually consumes his time. It is a story of love over the centuries, of struggle against hard times and also of murder. I cannot give to much away as this will ruin your enjoyment. If you like a slightly supernatural story this is for you. Very good.

★★★★ – Amazon
Gripping story
6 February 2015 – Very good story; starts a bit slow, but if you keep going it will eventually grip you. It made me want to watch the short movie in which the book is based. I very much enjoyed the way the history of Iceland is used as a backdrop for the story, that works very well. The pronunciation guide was a nice touch, by the way.

★★★★ – Goodreads
Nordic spirits and a Nordic Tiger
11 May 2015 – This crime novel swings from standard mystery to very different mythology. Very pleasing story that is tied up well. Most of the characters are very real but not sympathetic. No sweethearts traipsing through this tundra. Great melding of ancient and co temporary conflict.

★★★★ – Bol (translated from Dutch)
Intriguing
29 September 2019 – An intriguing, non-linear, dark and moody book. Well written but no easy meal. The experienced reader will be rewarded with a beautiful and powerful story.

Fan Fiction

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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.

My First Translation

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It’s hard to imagine the thrill of writing a full blown novel until you do it. When Under the Black Sand was completed, six years ago, I could hardly believe it. If I can do it once, I can do it again, I though. in 2017, Blood and Rain was published. It was written differently, deliberately simpler than the debut, much more linear.

That was two years ago. What has happened since?

I took a new job and that ate away most of my time. Still, I have managed to finish the first draft of Mont Noir, promised for 2019 but will be published next year. Then there are the Portuguese and Spanish translations of Blood and Rain, both coming soon.

That’s not all. I revisited the Black Sand and translated it into Icelandic, my native tongue. I always felt it should exist in Icelandic. It is an Icelandic story, the mythology, the saga that spans a thousand years, the modern reality of the boom-bust economy and privatisation, the disconnect from what really matters as we lose ourselves in the race for material comfort. They all play a role in the story and so it should be accessible to my fellow countryfolk.

Funny thing about going through it again and seeing it in its native language, I felt I needed to expand on a few things because the Icelanders would “get it”, while I deleted other things as it didn’t need to be explained to them. The Icelandic version has turned into its own thing. It is the same story, but it feels different.

I may want to revisit the English text now, but maybe I should focus on future projects instead. Time will tell.

Undir Svörtum Sandi will be published on 17 October 2019.