blood and rain

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.

Are Internet users thieves?

8 February 2017 by villia Leave a Comment

Back in 2007, I released my short film Black Sand onto the world. I used it as an experiment to see if Internet users really were the thieving scum some claim them to be. It’s been ten years and I can’t remember the details of how it all went. After searching my old blog (in Icelandic), I see that it was downloaded 799 times in the first two weeks. Ten users had paid for it, which made up 1.6% of total downloads (that’s what it says on the blog, I must have had better data back then). It doesn’t say much though, as this was the infancy of paid content online and many got in touch saying they would have paid for it if I’d included an Icelandic bank account. I believe the final numbers were slightly more favourable, but it’s been a long time and I can’t be sure.

Ten years on and I have another product. And I’m still curious. How has the Internet changed, have easier payment options encouraged more people to pay for content or are we mostly freeloaders that won’t pay unless we absolutely have to? Having seen iTunes sell billions of songs, Netflix and Spotify sell millions of subscriptions, I’m not convinced we are all thieves. I believe it has everything to do with ease of access and fair pricing.

BLOOD AND RAIN is my new novel. It’ll be published on 3 March but can be pre-ordered now. And the price? Whatever you want to pay.

The idea is to let potential readers decide what they pay for the novel. Go and get it, pay a euro, ten euros, nothing. It’s up to you. A month from now, I will write a new blog post and present the findings. How many people bought it, how many people paid, how many didn’t pay, what was the average price, what was the median income per downloaded item (if I can get my head around median).

I’m doing this because I have never believed Internet users were thieves. It’s just that the accessibility of content wasn’t always optimal. It was easier to download an MP3 than it was to get on a bus, go downtown and buy a record. And pricing. Sometimes I’m shocked at the prices of online content. Why do I pay €15 or more for an eBook when the physical book is similarly priced? My novels are available in print editions and I know that it’s not cheap to get them printed. Digital distribution costs next to nothing and we should, at least partially, pass the savings onto readers, listeners or viewers. Yes, us authors need to live, eat, pay mortgages, but what we save on printing costs shouldn’t only benefit us. It should benefit us all.

So, go get to it. Order the book if you like the synopsis. Pay whatever you like and watch this space. I shall be revealing everything a month from now.

Oh, and isn’t this a nice way to sell a book that deals with anarchism?

Blood and Rain is (almost) here

1 February 2017 by villia Leave a Comment

It’s taken a while. It always takes a while. Writing a novel is an exercise in carefully selecting the right words. 50-100.000 of them. I could probably do it faster if I didn’t have a family and a job, but no matter. This is a milestone. It is a huge deal to write a novel. They say everyone has a story in them and if you’re lucky enough to be able to write the words, you may possibly end up with a coherent story to tell.

Doing it again is another matter altogether. Your story has been told. Now, come up with another one.

Blood and Rain - paperback — Blood and Rain – paperback

Blood and Rain was born out of two things. I wanted to see if I could do it again and I was curious about the Spanish Civil War. Like most, I knew very little about it. I knew it had happened, but little more. So I started digging. I imagined the people stuck there, in that time and place. We are all prisoners of the times we live in, but what was it like to be there at that time?

The horrors revealed themselves. The massacres, atrocities, people’s endless thirst for a good life and just society. I saw how women were embraced, how they gained equal rights, how the oppression of the church was broken back, but also how the churches were burned and priests murdered, how internal squabbles destroyed the dream of an anarchist utopia. I learned to appreciate Federico García Lorca and other characters caught up in the war. I learned about Guernica and how Spain was used as a testing ground for weapons to be used during the Second World War.

I had to create a character and put him in there.

Research is a wonderful thing. I learned about Biblia del Oso, the Bible of the Bear. The first Bible printed in Spanish, by a man that had escaped the Spanish Inquisition.

Heck, this project has inspired me to start learning the language.

Blood and Rain was a labour of love. I fell in love with Spain, Barcelona and the people of Catalonia. I hope the novel will be read and I dream of it being translated into Spanish some day.

Blood and Rain will be published on 3 March 2017.

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.