I’m back, baby!

Look at my header on this blog. There is a person walking there with a dog. That person is my dad. If you follow me on Instagram you know he died on the 11/2 in the year 2022 when I was barely two months post partum. To say that it was an emotional trauma is an understatement. Add the wars around the world, the economy crashing, impending doom and all that, I haven’t really felt like writing. I tried occasionally, as one does when you’re an authos. And yes, I did pick up my computer on Novemeber 2022 as per the last post on this blog. It didn’t lead anywhere. For most of 2022 and 2023 I wrote nothing.

Which is why I’m so happy to announce that I am not dead. Not as a woman, not as a human and certainly not as an author. It’s now only January of 2024 and I sent the novel “Charlotte Times Two” to my beta readers late last night. By the time I sent it in, I was even proud of it. It’s good, in the end it was something I’m proud of.

You might also notice that I’ve added a new page under my header called Saltbridge Hollow. It’s connected to “Charlotte Times Two”, but more on that at a later time. I’m carefully optimistic that I will finish another book this year and I’ve already outlined it. For the first time in a long time I’m excited about the future.

I’m back, baby!

U is for Understatement of the century

No… seriously.

Five days ago I wrote a post saying that this was the most unproductive summer I have had for ages and how it’s good for me to take a break and all. And then the bombshell hit.

I put my current work in process on ice and started another one. And in just three days I’m up 9 THOUSAND words. I don’t know what’s happening but I’m just grabbing my laptop and holding on for dear life.

I start work in ten days. Technically I could be up to 40k words by then. Doubt it, but I think I shall be close. The words are just pouring out of me.

I can’t tell you about it though, because then the magic will go away. I just hope it will be beautiful.

…and don’t worry about my other one, the Saltbridge Hollow #1. I put “A Tale of Spiders and Canned Soup” for hold for over a year while suddenly finding myself writing “Stargazing” and both books are out now and all is well.

Reminder that you can check out my novels here.

And you can read 10+ short stories for free here.

T is for 2020 Summer Update

I’m feeling meh.

It’s summer. Usually my summers are filled with writing, transformation, more writing, reflection, growth and even more writing. I opened the main document for my work in process (the first part of a series called “Saltbridge Hollow” so that’s exciting) it said that it was 5 days ago since it was edited. FIVE DAYS. I haven’t opened my work in process for five days.

S if for Spring Update (both teacher and author)

Today I signed a contract for a new job! After posts like this and this and others, you can imagine how happy I am.

I Love You Nora Whispered Character Presentation – minor characters

Author note: As a celebration of finishing my fifth novel I’m going to once a week for the next five weeks do presentations of characters from my newest novel “I Love You Nora Whispered”. It’s a story set in England during the 1940s.

In this post I want to focus on minor characters, the families that Katherine and Nora come from.

Autumn update

 

We are now almost halfway through October! I’m having a hard time realizing and accepting that the year is drawing to a close. In one way I’m very grateful since 2019 started in a very bad way for me and usually I love December and January and I want experience them again without being on heavy medicine. But more on that at another time.

I wanted to give a bit of an update. When the term started I made a post on how I was going to manage to stay active as an author and blogger even while working as a teacher. I always fail at that but this term I wanted to manage. I want to be an author all year around and not just during June, July and August.

Now I haven’t been as active on here and other social media as I wanted but since writing that post I have been asked by my boss to take additional classes at university on teaching Swedish as a Second Language to help children who are new to Sweden. This is a mission and an opportunity I’m very grateful for since it also adds to my responsibility as a teacher. HOWEVER that gives me less time and energy for author stuff. Even now I should be studying and instead I’m writing this post.

Anyway….

• “I Love You Nora Whispered” is in beta reading and I’m writing character representations that I’m posting here. So keep an eye out for that.
• I was supposed to start the first installment in my zombie series but instead I kind of started a contemporary romance novel about an author and a teacher (yeah, yeah, I know). That’s all I’m going to say about that now.
• I want to write some short stories (under 5000 words) to publish on my blog that you can read for free but we will see how much energy I have later this month.
• It’s almost November but I’m obviously not doing NaNoWriMo. I did manage once (although it was during my fanfiction days) but not since I started working. I am writing and that’s good enough for me.
• We have moved into our new home now after living in temporary spaces since May. It’s such a relief.
• I’m still continuing my ABC blog post series even though it might seem like I’m not. I’ve just had posts to write that didn’t fall into the proper letter.

I Love You Nora Whispered Character Presentation – Katherine

Author note: As a celebration of finishing my fifth novel I’m going to once a week for the next five weeks do presentations of characters from my newest novel “I Love You Nora Whispered”. It’s a story set in England during the 1940s.

First out is Katherine Waterhouse.

I thought I could, so I did

I wrote the outline for this post months ago. Then work happened and my creative energies turned to teaching. After dressing up as Moses and speaking in first person during a lesson about religion after fixing a conflict that happened during recess, it’s hard to go home and just turn on being a lesfic author.

However, I was happy for my diligent planning during the summer. I know what this post is about HOWEVER I have no idea on why, underneath the outline I wrote “I GOT HORNS”… just like that. In caps lock. What did I want to tell my future self? Was that suppose to be the beginning of this post? I have no idea.

In this post I want to talk about becoming an author and what that means, mentally and practically.

T is for Term is Starting

As a teacher I’m incredibly spoiled. I stop working around the 20th of June and don’t start again until 14th of August. It feels like more than two months. Usually the summers feel like a whole life-time passes. It’s a time where I learn stuff, write a lot, play full-time author, go on trips, practice skills etc. The person that comes back to work in August is not the person that left in June.

HOWEVER and that is a big however, during the school year I am very tired and very busy. As I wrote in the post about my workplace, we teachers face certain conditions that are unacceptable. I love my job, believe you me, and I’m active not just in my own class but different groups and projects like a Swedish type of school board where we discuss the situation for our school in general. Last year the principal and I ran a project where we went into every single classroom in fourth, fifth and sixth grade where we taught the students about bullying on the internet. This is on top of teaching, assessing and planning for my own 24 third-graders. I love education and everything that comes with it but I also know that it eats a chunk of will to do other stuff – this includes being an author and running my blog.

This summer has been amazing. I made an author facebook that I’ve been using to connect with people in a more real way than I did before. Especially other authors and writers which has been so much fun. I’ve also done plenty of blog posts plus discovered how fun it is to make reviews of lesfic novels.

The bottom-line is, I don’t want to stop. I want to have my cookie and eat it too. I want to be able to be both a writer and a teacher in the same time, I don’t want to sacrifice one for the other because they are both equally important to me. They are. They are. They are.

So, like a teacher, I’ve made a plan and a schedule. If it doesn’t work out, fine, then it doesn’t, but I have to try. I made a paper schedule for what I’ll do on what days (the picture at the top) and I also roughly planned enough blog posts to take me through the rest of the year. I still did the bulk of my writing during the summer but I’m still not done with “I Love You, Nora Whispered”, I think and hope it’ll be done soon.

So here is to trying! To all of us whose vacations are ending. Let’s hope the year is kind to us.

Please check back in tomorrow for my review of “Awakened by Fate” by Lynn Lawler.

Summer update

I’m spending this week in Norway, my big sister lives here with her boyfriend (manfriend?) and their five-year-old daughter. My parents and all our dogs are here too. It’s been lovely spending time in the Norwegian south surrounded by strawberry fields and mountains.

It’s also fun to revert back into being the little sister. I’m almost thirty and yet my big sister still calls me the Swedish word for “mischief”, she will say “mischief, will you help me with bla bla” I don’t remember what I did in toddlerhood to earn that nickname, but it’s stuck. Some girls got to be called Princesses when little but not I, no, I’m Mischief.

In between being social and playing with my niece, I have done a lot of writing. Like A LOT of writing. Two days ago something clicked in my brain and since then I have done 10k words. My newest novel, “The Biggest Secret” is at 50 000 words now but it’s not finished. I secretly wish for it to be 100k, I have never written such a long novel before. I think however, it will land at around 80 or 90k.

I will not manage to write at crazy speed for the rest of the novel of course but hope to still do at least 2k a day-ish. My wife has been doing a weekly commute for four months and she is finally on vacation today when she comes here tonight. I haven’t properly seen her for four months so you can bet that I will want to spend as much time with her as possible. With that said, she isn’t a morning person so I’m planning to write in the mornings before she wakes up.

I have also planned a couple of blog post for the next couple of weeks so keep an eye out for that.

I thought I could, so I did – a blog post about going from being unpublished to published author.

S is for Source – the next installment in the ABC posts. It’s about who we write for and where stories come from. This one is done in the same way as P is for Pressure.

Review of Take Me Home by Ria M Apple 

….and other reviews of the books I had in my summer to-read list.

Otherwise I hope you’re all surviving in the summer heat. Remember to hydrate and go inside if it gets too much. Heat can be dangerous even if us in the north tend to high temperatures in theory.