Veronica Li's Blog

My husband, Sverrir Sigurdsson, and I recently published a book called Viking Voyager: An Icelandic Memoir, released on Nov. 3, 2020. It's his personal story of growing up in Iceland, an upbringing that inspired him to travel the world like his Viking forefathers.
We're happy to say, after several years of sometimes frustrating collaboration, we're still married. No two people can be more different than us. I'm a "people" person and he's what I call a "thing" person. He knows everything about hardware and machines and is a moron on human emotions and signals. I'm blind as a bat when it comes to my physical surroundings, but I can sniff out emotions like a dog. What we thought was an unbridgeable gap turned out to be our strength. Sverrir provided the facts, I filled in the emotions, and together we tell a pretty exciting story.
Here’s the back cover summary of our book:
This vivacious personal story captures the heart and soul of modern Iceland. Born in Reykjavik on the eve of the Second World War, Sverrir Sigurdsson watched Allied troops invade his country and turn it into a bulwark against Hitler’s advance toward North America. The country’s post-war transformation from an obscure, dirt-poor nation to a prosperous one became every Icelander’s success. Spurred by this favorable wind, Sverrir answered the call of his Viking forefathers, setting off on a voyage that took him around the world. Join him on his roaring adventures!

I just published my third book, Confucius Says. It’s a novel on caring for aging parents and is based on my own experience.

In the story, Cary, a middle-aged Chinese American, takes her parents into her home in Northern Virginia. She has been taught to believe in the Confucian virtue of filial piety and wants to do her utmost for her parents. But when the pressure of caregiving builds, and her marriage and health suffer, she reads the classics to find out what exactly Confucius says. The result is a surprising discovery of what filial piety is and isn’t.

“In this era of unprecedented longevity, this story of caregiving for elderly parents is most timely,” says a review by Yong Ho of The China Institute in America. “While love for parents is a natural instinct, the Chinese codify it with a set of written guidelines. Through a humorous and entertaining story, the author uncovers the universal truths in Confucius’ teachings and applies them to a modern-day family.”

Journey Across the Four Seas: A Chinese Woman's Search for Home

Happy Chinese New Year! Journey Across the Four Seas is on sale for $0.99 Feb. 17, Tuesday, through Feb. 19, Thursday. The book, a memoir of my mother’s life, is about the Chinese cultural values on family and education.

Ancient China was called a family state. It was an agricultural society, where people worked the land and never moved away. If you were born in a place, you lived your whole life in that place. Your family kept on growing and growing until it became a village and then a state. The family was everything to a person. It provided education, employment, protection, insurance—everything a person needed in his lifetime.

The Chinese emphasis on education started about 2,000 years ago, when the imperial exam system was established. Any male, regardless of wealth and social status, was allowed to participate. It was the only way for a person to change his station in life. The exams were grueling and went on for days, but a person who passed them became an official of the imperial court. He brought wealth and glory to himself, his family and his entire village.

I wish everyone a wonderful year of the sheep, hopefully a gentle and calm year!

To celebrate Mother’s Day in the UK, British book blogger Rachel Cotterill is featuring my book on her site:
http://books.rachelcotterill.com/2012...
http://books.rachelcotterill.com/2012...
JOURNEY ACROSS THE FOUR SEAS is a book about my mother’s life. This book is the greatest gift between mother and daughter. It’s a gift to me because it gives me my past. It’s a gift to my mother because it gives her immortality.

My books NIGHTFALL IN MOGADISHU and JOURNEY ACROSS THE FOUR SEAS are featured on Daily Cheap Reads. It's a great site for finding supercheap ebooks, in addition to book reviews and author blogs.
Here are the links:
http://dailycheapreads.com/?s=nightfa...
http://dailycheapreads.com/2012/01/25...

Amazon Kindle edition now on sale for $2.99
This is a true story of my mother's life in China. She was one of the first Chinese women to go to college. But wars and revolutions upended her life and turned her into a refugee in search of a home. She eventually brought the family to the U.S. It's an inspirational story of the human will to survive and improve the lives of the next generation.
Let me tell you how I got to write this book. My parents came from California to live with me in Virginia about ten years ago, when they were getting on in age. California was the place we immigrated to in 1967. I was the only one who came east. My four siblings were still in California, and they’d all taken turns in caring for my parents. I felt that my turn had come. I used to work for the World Bank in Washington DC, but I had quit my job to stay home and write. As a writer, my schedule was the most flexible. We held a family conference and we all agreed that I was in the best position to take care of my parents.
Now, my mother was a fantastic storyteller, and she loved to tell stories about her life. I’d listened to them many times when I was a child, and never gave them much thought. But my friends heard them for the first time and they were fascinated. Somebody suggested that I write the stories down. I also thought it was a good idea. So I sat down with her and taped her stories.
Then came the question of whether to write it as a biography or a memoir. My first inclination was to write it as a biography. It would be from a third person point of view, and I would be free to put in my own interpretation. But after a few chapters, I decided to make it a memoir in my mother’s voice. Her voice was so beautiful, so lyrical, that I knew I had to let it sing.

Please see my interview on A Bookish Affair.
http://abookishaffair.blogspot.com/20...
The blog site is also hosting an ebook giveaway of my two titles, NIGHTFALL IN MOGADISHU and JOURNEY ACROSS THE FOUR SEAS: A CHINESE WOMAN'S SEARCH FOR HOME and
My first book is a spy thriller set in Somalia. The second is a memoir about my mother's life. In the interview I discuss how I handled the transition from one writing style to a very different one.

Please see my blog post on why I write.

http://www.nickijmarkus.com/2011/06/v...

Nightfall in Mogadishu
Kindle edition now selling at $0.99.
Paperback available at Amazon and http://www.authorhouse.com/Bookstore/...

NIGHTFALL IN MOGADISHU is a historical novel and spy thriller set in Somalia. I was an aid worker in Somalia in the late eighties, just before the government collapsed and Somalia became a failed state.

During my work there, I found the Somalis to be a warm and hospitable people. Most of the population was still nomadic, roaming the Horn of Africa with their camels as they had for thousands of years. Their society was organized into clans, and people looked to their clan for everything from personal and financial security to marriage. The women were beautiful and strong, dispelling my impression that Islamic women were oppressed. Mogadishu, the capital, was a quaint but charming city, with its blend of Italian and Arab cultures and fantastic view of the Indian Ocean.

However, the president, Siad Barre, was a brutal dictator who persecuted any clan that opposed him. He was finally ousted after twenty-two years in power. Inexperienced in nation building, the clans were unable to form a new government, and thus began the country’s descent into chaos.

I wanted answers to this tragedy. I went to the library and checked out every book there was on Somalia. But to me, reading wasn’t enough. I had to write about it. A person can do as much reading on a subject as he wants, but if he doesn’t go through the process of writing about it, which forces him to synthesize all the pieces, he can never come up with his own vision. So I spun all the pieces together into a spy thriller full of international intrigue (with a bit of sex thrown in). At the end of it, I was able to gain a deeper understanding of what had happened in Somalia. Unfortunately, the same story is unfolding in neighboring countries such as Libya and Yemen.

May is Asian American heritage month. One word describes my Chinese heritage—education. For their children’s education, Chinese parents would do anything. My parents uprooted themselves to bring the five of us to the U.S. so we could all go to college. You can read about it in my book Journey Across the Four Seas: A Chinese Woman's Search for Home. Home, to my mom, was where her children could get the best possible education.

The Chinese cultural emphasis on education started about 2,000 years ago, when the imperial exam system was established. Any male, regardless of wealth and social status, was allowed to participate. It was the only way for a poor peasant to bootstrap himself out of poverty. The exams were grueling and went on for days, but a person who passed them became an official of the imperial court. He brought wealth and glory to himself, his family and his entire village.

Chinese folklore is full of such success stories. This value for academic achievement has earned Chinese Americans the title, “model minority.”