Tim Slee's Blog: How's the Serenity? - Posts Tagged "viking"

I'll try to give a few insights into the creative process behind this new episode of the Midgaard Cycle.

I always conceived the Midgaard Cycle as a trilogy, and that idea was only strengthened when volume 1, The Vanirim, won the grand prize in the Publishers Weekly BookLife awards, the most important result being that the prizemoney enabled me to blow my charity fundraising target for that year out of the water. (All sales of my books go to charity, this year it is Plan International, the #girlsrights organisation).

The three volumes will be The Vanirim, the Æsir and finally, the Jötunn, each featuring a new faction in the universe of Norse deities. The first volume was written in the first person voice of the main protagonist, Tully McIntyre, a man who has had his ability to feel emotion cauterised, and whose psyche is fighting back. It was a unique viewpoint to examine what is essentially a crime story through.

But as I got about a third of the way into volume 2, the Æsir, I realised the storyline would not work if I wrote it in same first person voice. So I changed it to third person and the story is mostly seen through the eyes of another protagonist, Regin Investigator Stella Valiente.

There are many precedents for creatively playing with the POV through a series, not least of which is Lee Childs Jack Reacher series which is sometimes written in first person, other times in third. What drives this decision is often the fact that the protagonist is hiding a secret and it wouldn't be credible for him to keep it from the reader. This wasn't a problem in The Vanirim because although McIntyre had secrets, they weren't even known to himself.

In the Æsir though, McIntyre has a very important hidden agenda and I didn't feel he could narrate the story and keep his secret hidden at the same time.

If that change of PoV disconcerts you as a reader, fear not! McIntyre will be back as first person narrator in Volume 3, The Jötunn!

Summer back catalogue sale now on! EBooks as low as $3, paperbacks $12.99. All proceeds to Plan International for #girlsrights!



https://www.amazon.com/Tim-Slee/e/B07...

Grab a FREE Advance Review Copy of my upcoming novel before it comes out this October. All sales after release go to charity! Avail here:
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This has been an ambitious project: a Clancy-esque technothriller running to 500 pages. To land it I've had help from a fantastic team of technical advisers in the police, armed forces and even defense systems contracting. Publishers Weekly BookLife reviewed the draft and said, "Realistic and original...a fast-paced thriller packed with action and suspense."

Step one, have dream come true...

Step two?

So, after two and half years of writing, self publishing, reading, writing, reading, writing and (yep) writing some more I landed a contract for one of my unpublished manuscripts. Yay!!

Now I have to deliver the book, but that's not the hard part. This book, BURN, is unlike any of my others (not hard since all my books are unlike each other - sci fi, noir, thrillers, historical fiction) because it is contemporary fiction, very Australian.

It therefore made sense for me to retire my earlier stuff and just focus on BURN, and on getting started on a follow-on novel in the same vein.

But I'm finding leaving the other titles behind, even if it is temporary, is like literary amputation! I unpublished them from Amazon, but Amazon won't take down paperback titles because they can still be traded second-hand, so they are still up there, like phantom limbs.

And it's only been a month, so people who got a copy earlier this year are still putting up reviews on sites like Goodreads. Which is a tweak of the knife when the reviews are like "Omg this book was absolutely amazing!":

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

So I tell myself it's all good, those earlier manuscripts were just a part of the journey to help you find your voice, don't look back, look ahead!

Still. I never thought about this part. I have the Beatles song playing on repeat in my head:

You say "Yes", I say "No".
You say "Stop" and I say "Go, go, go".
Oh no.
You say "Goodbye" and I say "Hello, hello, hello"

Goodbye Charlie Jones, Freya Eriksdottir, Tully McIntyre ... hello hello BURN!

Hello, got this question on a book forum and thought I would clear up the mystery! In 2016-17 I published a series of novels that I had been working on since about 2013 - the main purpose being to raise some money for charity, the secondary purpose to experiment with self publishing and get some solid reader feedback on my work.

It turned out to be a great project and the books were well received; two were shortlisted in the US Publishers Weekly BookLife Prize for Fiction and 'The Vanirim' was the Grand Prize winner. Some, like the 'Charlie Jones' series and 'Queen of America' developed a devoted following (and there are sequels in the works, don't despair) and I enjoyed a lot of great interaction with readers.

But then ... in 2018 I submitted a manuscript to the HarperCollins Banjo Prize for unpublished Australian fiction and was fortunate to win a publishing contract! Which means devoting my energy to a new direction, so I've decided to 'retire' the earlier manuscripts for now.

All of these manuscripts are still available on request in e-Book format. Just write to me at teejayslee@gmail.com and I will send you a link from where you freely can download the e-Book.

Cheers,

TJ