Suzanne Berget's Blog

Time has just flown by, hasn’t it? I haven’t posted anything since the end of May, but as you can probably already guess I have been very busy! I’ve been to my second con where I participated -as an author – on two different panels, I’ve finished the second draft of my horror novel and sent it out to beta readers (three have provided feedback so far and I’m so excited to dive back into that project next month), I’ve had three weeks’ of summer vacation and I’ve been to a wedding in Jotunheimen National Park. It was amazing!

But, I’ve also taken some time to indulge in some hobbies that have been neglected while I’ve worked on the sequel to Let Slip the Beasts, chief among them: drawing, or digital painting to be accurate. I’ve been trying my hand at some new character art. You can see the results below!

Some normal character art of Kallie’s old friends Aurelia and Baptiste, and one not so normal of Kallie from the sequel (!) to Let Slip the Beasts. In this particular scene she’s about to have a very violent meeting with some corporate mercenaries who have something Kallie wants…

And here’s my newest piece – the first in a series I hope because it was a lot of fun to paint – which I haven’t posted anywhere else yet: Thresher in all his glory (almost)!

Until next time, nerds!

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So, in the beginning of this month I attended my first con as an author. The convention was Fredrikstad SciFi Festival and we were there for two days, Friday and Saturday, for roughly 8-9 hours each day. I had my little table in the artists’ alley stocked with regular books, special editions, bookmarks, buttons, bookish bracelets and stickers.

All my merch showed up on time for the convention, I had my books, the vibe was good and I was sitting next to two really talented and very nice comic book artists and book illustrators, Sara and Kim.

The audience and participants at the festival were a little younger that expected, which I think affected my sales somewhat. So over the two days we were there I had a total of 25 sales – only 6 of those were books (and 2 of those were to my stand neighbors lol). But every time someone was interested in buying the book, I managed to upsell them the special edition which was slightly more expensive. More monies for treats for me!

Three sales were bookish bracelets and the rest were stickers and buttons. The bookmarks didn’t do too great, and one of the stickers – the little lion man – didn’t sell at all. I’ve updated that sticker since, hopefully that will help sell it at the next con. Bookmarks are more of a marketing tool, so that’s fine. Moneywise I broke more or less even, which I’m pretty happy about.

All in all it was a very educational experience and a pretty good first con. The Fredrikstad SciFi Festival is quite inexpensive as far as cons in Norway go, which makes it more accessible to smaller vendors and people who are just starting out.

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It’s April already?? Time has just flown by, hasn’t it? In my last blog post I promised a more substantial update soon, and soon is now I guess, so here we go!

My publisher, CBG, has new owners, which is great. Looks like I might have a better experience with my sequel than I did with Let Slip the Beasts. But! There’s always a but, isn’t there? The old owner is refusing to cooperate with the new owners , so there’s a chance I might not see any of the royalties I earned before January 1st 2025. Which sucks big time because I worked hard for that money! Even if it’s not a very impressive amount, I still want that handful of dollars.

I’m attending my first con! I’ve booked a small art stand at Fredrikstad Science Fiction Festival and I’ll be there selling my books and some merch I’m working very hard on at the moment.

And, last but not least, book 2 has been sent to the publisher! The final draft came in at 94K words and the synopsis was four pages long. A lot of stuff is going to happen, let me tell you that. The book also officially has a title and the title features some of my favorite things: Beasts, alliteration and literary references. But more on that later! Oh man, I can’t wait to talk about all the cool stuff that happens in that book. There’s just so much I wan’t to scream about, but I don’t wanna spoil anything and it’s so damn hard…ugh!

That’s all for now. Later!

The post I’m still here! appeared first on Suzanne Berget.

It’s already 2025? That means I’ll be 40 next year… Where did all the time go? Anyway, I read some books last year. Some comic books, some indies, some trads, some good, some bad and even some in Norwegian. Behold!

I’ll have a have a more substantial update soon Until then!

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So, I haven’t updated this thing since July…But I have not been laying on the lazy side, as we say in Norway! In that time I’ve finished the second draft of Fire, the sequel to Let Slip the Beasts. The second draft comes in at 88K words, that’s 15K more than the original draft, and 33 chapters. It’s still in a pretty rough shape, but not as rough shape as the earlier drafts of Let Slip the Beasts (or Embers as it was called back then)….hoooo boiiii. I’ve learned a lot since then.

I’ve also acquired 5 beta readers (two returning ones and three brand new ones). And sent the second draft off to them! Now I just have to wait for them to read, judge, and give feedback. I think this is the worst part, and I’ll spend the next few weeks distracting myself with other hobbies, and mentally steeling myself for the critique to come.

I like to think I have thick skin and handle criticism well after 12 years as a video game journalist, but when it comes to my creative writing I feel like I don’t have any skin at all. So if you say something mean, I will cry! This is why I like the Oreo-method or whatever it’s called. That’s when you put a piece of negative critique in between two nicer comments like so: I like you characters. Your prose sucks donkey balls tho. But your world-building is dope. See?

Speaking of distractions, I finally finished a portrait of Buck I started on a long time ago. It’s not my best work, but it’s done, which means I get to make other stuff! There’s something about starting a new project and then finishing it in relatively short time that I just love. It’s so fulfilling.

Anyway, here she is:

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This is going to be a far more personal blog post than any of my previous ones. It’s about my dad, so buckle up!

My book recently turned one year old. As always, birthdays make me reflect on the year that has passed – the good times, the bad times, the accomplishments, the failures, future plans and goals etc.

This time, though, I’ve reflected on Let Slip the Beasts. As a story, but also Kallie as a main character and all the parts she’s made up of. There’s an old adage in creative writing: Write what you know. Lately I’ve been thinking about how I’ve utilized what I know when writing Let Slip the Beasts. And the thing is, my knowledge and experience has manifested in some unexpected ways. Specifically when it comes to Kallie.

Most new authors put a lot of themselves in their main characters (sometimes too much but we’re not gonna get into that right now). I’m no exception. Kallie is a lot like me, no doubt about it. But she is also, surprisingly, a lot like my dad. The stubborness, the recklessness, the alcoholic tendencies, the explosive mood swings – that’s all my him. And by genetic inheritance me too, I guess. After all, I am what remains.

You see, my dad passed away when I was 24. He suffered from a particularly virulent form of stomach cancer that ate him up in the span of a few months. He was diagnosed in January 2010. He died April 14th 2010, two weeks before his 51st birthday. I remember visiting him in the hospital in March, and the moment I laid eyes on him I thought “here is a dead man”. That man was not my dad. Just a walking dead who happened to look like him, too stubborn to give up the ghost.

We weren’t as close as I wished we could have been. He left my mom when I was four. We spent summers and every other Christmas together, but the visits were alway fraught with insecurity. My dad was a volatile man prone to drink. The older I became the angrier his behaviour made me. It wasn’t all bad tho. We had some good times too. Eating fresh fish straight from the sea, watching action movies, playing Trivial Pursuit and video games.

I remember being seven years old and my dad renting a Nintendo Entertainment System at the local video store and the two of us spending the whole weekend playing Super Mario Bros. Now, 30 years later, there are few things I love more than action movies, quizzes and video games. Not to mention how action movies and video games have inspired Let Slip the Beasts.

When my dad was 26 – young, dumb and reckless – he and a few friends got drunk at a party and decided to drive to another location. I’m fuzzy on the details as my dad didn’t like to talk about this incident. They ended up crashing. I think the driver died. My dad was far luckier. He only broke his back and was paralyzed from the waist down. The doctors told him he would never walk again. The stubborn motherfucker just said “fuck that and fuck you” (I’m most likely paraphrasing here, but I can totally picture it).

They sent him to Sunnaas, a hospital for physical therapy and rehabilitation. Incidentally, this is where he met my mom, who was a nurse there at the time. With the help of the good doctors (and my mom) at Sunnaas, and a healthy dose of stubborness and sheer force of will, my dad learned how to walk again. It took a lot of time and hard work and it wasn’t a completely perfect recovery – he was prone to severe cramps that would make his legs seize up. In his later years he used a wheelchair to better get around from A to B – a huge relief to me and my grandmother (RIP bestemor). We always worried he would fall and hurt himself when he was out and about.

Now, a year after my debut I’ve realized that this story about my dad, parts of it anyway, has made its way into Let Slip the Beasts. A subconcious homage to a complicated man who, whether I like it or not, has informed who I am today. Those of you who have read the book will know which part I’m referring to.

For the uninitiated here comes a little spoiler: Kallie acts recklessly (to put it mildly) and has her back broken, making her paralyzed from the waist down. With a little help from a friend, and a good dose of stubborness, the injury is fixed and she can walk again, but suffers from the occasional cramp that makes her leg seize up. When I wrote it I didn’t think much of it, it just felt natural. But now that I’m older and wiser it’s clear my dad was a ghost between the lines, influencing the shape of things.

I don’t know, it feels kinda nice knowing that even after everyone who knows him is gone, after I’m gone, a part of him will still live on in that book. And isn’t that what we all want? A legacy. However small and unexpected.

The post My dad is the ghost between the lines appeared first on Suzanne Berget.

Jesus, my last post was in March?! So, I finished the first draft of the sequel to Let Slip the Beasts on April 29th. In other words, this blog post is long overdue, haha. The draft clocked in at roughly 73 500 words, which is pretty decent for a first draft, if you ask me. Especially since I tend to underwrite. So, I finished it and it felt great. But I haven’t even touched it or looked at it since.

I think I got a little burned out, to be honest. Having a day job, other hobbies and responsibilities, and maintaining a social life while trying to finish an entire fucking novel sure does take a toll on you! The plan was to pick the draft back up after a little while to have a look at it with fresh eyes, but so far I haven’t mustered the strength to do it. We’ve been travelling and also started a redecorating project that takes up most of the energy I have left after work. Which isn’t a whole lot.

But the draft is good. I think. I like the story. I like how the characters are developing. There are a couple of new ones that I can’t wait to draw. I think I’ve set up some cool stuff for the next book. I feel good about it, I do. But when I think about how much work is left, the rounds of editing, finding beta readers, the waiting for feedback, the marketing, the waiting, the waiting, the waiting – it all seems a little overwhelming. And since I’ve had so much trouble with the first book (I still haven’t managed to get it to Norway) and my sales numbers aren’t great, I’m struggling to find the motivation to pick the project back up.

I will eventually, don’t worry.

In other news, I’ve finally sold enough books to earn royalties! I haven’t technically received them yet, but I’ve already bought a little treat for myself, haha.

The post First draft blues appeared first on Suzanne Berget.

Back in the beginning of February I said I didn’t have an ETA for the paperback edition of Let Slip the Beasts. Little did I know that less than a month later it would be published – much to my surprise!

But its out now, it’s available from Amazon, and I have received my first copies! Reader, it feels so good to finally hold her and damn, she looks so good in real life!! Sevannah Storm really did a terrific job on the cover. LOOK!

Now I just have to figure out how to get the paperback edition to Norway in bulk, because that’s proving trickier than I first anticipated. Something about the book not being available for distribution, because it isn’t listed with Ingram or something called Nielsen…idk, man. I do have a Plan B, which is fast becoming Plan A. Either way, the paperback edition WILL be available in stores here in Norway at some point and I WILL have a proper launch party! Gotta manifest that shit.

I also got a proper desk and chair now, so the sequel should pretty much write itself. Ta-ta!

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So, I haven’t really written an update on this blog since September all the way back in 2023 (the book review in November doesn’t really count). Motivation has been lacking to be honest, but I’ve also been VERY busy! In October I was in Japan, which was amazing, November and December were just whack due to me working in a bookstore and getting sick, and I’ve spent January writing on the sequel to Let Slip the Beasts.

It’s coming along nicely! The first draft is currently sitting pretty at 50k words and is about two-thirds done. The story is definitely taking some unexpected turns, and I’m so excited about it. If you want to know more, check out my guest appeareance on the Page Turnerz podcast, where I talk about writing in general and writing the sequel.

I’ve also received my first quarterly report…but no royalties yet, which is kinda disappointing. I’ll hopefully get there eventually. The quarterly report covered June to September and in that period I sold a total of 48 books.

I still haven’t gotten a physical paperback release, or even an ETA for a physical release, which is quite annoying as I want to plan a proper launch party and stuff like that. But I have received several ratings and reviews on Goodreads since the last update AND my book was nominated in 5 categories in the 2023 Queer Indie Awards! In addition, another author wrote a fantastic review of Let Slip the Beasts, mentioning it in the same breath as The Island of Dr. Moreau and Bladerunner – which is absolutely wild to me! Reader, I might have cried a little…

Oh, and I’ve also joined a review tour thingy called Indie Visible Tours, so going forward I’ll be reading and reviewing a lot more indie books. Fun times ahead

If you’re curious about which books I read last year check out this Insta post!

The post A long overdue update appeared first on Suzanne Berget.

Jeg leste en himla god anmeldelse av Cinnabar One på Nye Nova og ble inspirert til å plukke den opp selv. Det er ikke hver dag det blir gitt ut ordentlig hard scifi på norsk, så jeg ble ordentlig gira på å gi meg i kast med den. Så gira at jeg tok den med meg til Japan og leste den på flyturen bort og hjem igjen.

(Boka er ikke på Goodreads eller Storygraph, derfor må jeg anmelde den på gamlemåten, nemlig på bloggen min)

Som Cato Pelligrini sier i Nye Nova, Det er ikke hverdagskost at norske fabelprosa-forfattere skriver slike romaner. Dette er en roman som foregår over et langt tidsrom og på flere planeter – Jorda, Mars og den fremmede planeten Aldanrey, som for de fleste, meg inkludert, er den mest interessante. I tillegg blir vi introdusert for det vidunderlige romskipet Cinnabar One, som har så mange finurlige løsninger på de mest komplekse problemer at det nesten virker som en magisk deus ex machina, men som godeste Arthur C. Clarke en gang sa “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”

Jeg skal ikke gå så nøye inn på selve historien for å unngå spoilere, og Nye Nova har allerede skrevet en veldig god oppsummering, men jeg kan si at den er spennende, har godt driv, en god del action og føles på mange måter som en Roland Emmerich-film a la Independence Day, The Day After Tomorrow og Moonfall. Teknologien og vitenskapen i Cinnabar One virker troverdig, og det er tydelig at forfatteren har mye kunnskap/har gjort mye research.

Og det er her problemene starter.

Det ligger mye planlegging og tenking og research bak Cinnabar One, og forfatteren lar ikke sjansen gå fra seg til å forklare ting ned til minste detalj. Men måten det blir gjort på gjør det tydelig at han ikke stoler på at leseren kan finne ut av ting på egen hånd. Alle spørsmål blir besvart med en gang og ingenting blir overlatt til fantasien. 

Denne overforklaringen skjer gjerne via fotnoter(!), som i seg selv er en uting for det får meg til å tenke på sakprosa og da blir lesing et ork, men det tar meg også ut av fortellingen fordi forfatteren plutselig er så tilstede. Det er et narrativt grep som virkelig ikke funker for meg. I tillegg er nesten alle fotnotene unødvendige for begrepet de forklarer blir enten aldri brukt igjen (som ly-gen og kaleri. Skjønner jeg at dette er en måleenhet for tid/avstand utifra kontekst? Ja. Trenger jeg å vite nøyaktig hvor langt det er? Nei, for det har null å si for historien) eller så blir det forklart i selve teksten en halv side seinere. Ikke bare tar dette opp undøvendig mye plass og øker sideantallet, men jeg får også det inntrykket at forfatteren tror jeg er dum. Dette er en major pet peeve, som det heter på godt norsk.

Så er det språket, da.

Boka har stort sett fått gode tilbakemeldinger, og det bemerkes at den er godt skrevet og at Bergfjord har en solid språkbeherskelse. Og det er her jeg må stille spørsmålet: Har vi lest samme bok?

Ja, jeg er kanskje en strengere leser enn de fleste og sliter litt med å skru av redaktørblikket. Og ja, siden jeg nettopp har vært gjennom den samme prosessen selv, har jeg nok lettere for å plukke opp på ting andre ikke nødvendigvis tenker over. Men! Jeg ignorerer det lett hvis det bare er snakk om en håndfull skriveleifer. Jeg har serr aldri lest en eneste bok, selv ikke fra de største utgiverne, som ikke har en skrivefeil eller fem. Dette er helt normalt. Men da jeg leste Cinnabar One la jeg merke til stadig flere feil som burde vært luket ut lenge før boka gikk i trykken.

Behold!

Her har jeg fargekodet alt grumset jeg har funnet, og som du kan se så er det en del! 

Oransje post-its markerer det jeg nevnte tidligere, nemlig (for meg) helt unødvendige fotnoter. Dette er jo ikke en “feil” i seg selv, mer en personlig preferanse. Men jeg ser ikke poenget med å ha en fotnote, når begrepet blir forklart hvis man bare leser et par sider til. Det føles som om jeg blir slått over hodet gjentatte ganger med all denne informasjonen.

Gule post-its markerer steder hvor det er ugrammatisk endring i tid, altså fra presens til preteritum, hvor det ikke skal være det. Dette er rett og slett bare slurv og burde vært luket ut under redigeringsarbeidet.

Rosa post-its markerer steder hvor det er såkalt hode-hopping, altså at synsvinkelen bytter midt i et avsnitt eller lignende. Man starter gjerne kapittelet med å følge en spesifikk karakter, være inni hodet hens og se ut gjennom øynene hens, men så plutselig skifter det til en annen karakter og det blir plutselig vanskelig å vite hvem vi faktisk følger. Det kan hende at forfatteren har prøvd seg på en autoral fortellerstemme med allvitende synsvinkel a la de gamle klassikerne – det ville forklart fotnotene og hvem som skriver dem – men utførelsen er i så fall uklar og forvirrende. F.eks. vi får en 4-5 sider med bakgrunnshistorien til en karakter som heter Wivildian og man får inntrykk av at det er hun som er synsvinkelkarakteren i dette kapittelet, og så plutselig er vi i hodet til Yttel og får vite hva han tenker om Wivildian. Man får litt whiplash til tider, for å si det mildt.

Lilla post-its er straight up helt standard feil – skriveleifer, manglende ord, mindre grammatiske feil, formateringsfeil etc. Alle bøker har noen av disse.

Blå er enda en pet peeve, nemlig overflødige ord og uttrykk. F.eks, en elv av vann. Men den personlige preferansen var ikke så viktig sammenlignet med alt det andre, tbh.

Alt dette er jo så klart ikke utelukkende på forfatterens kappe. Dette er feil som burde vært plukket opp av redaktør, språkvasker og korrekturleser – i det aller minste av en beta-leser, men her har det vært slurv i alle ledd. Og det er synd, for jeg hadde veldig lyst til å like denne boka! Historien er god den, men alle de språklige skavankene og det mangelfulle redigeringsarbeidet ødelegger leseopplevelsen min noe himla. Som historieforteller har Bergfjord helt klart talent, som forfatter har han et stykke igjen å gå (men dette er debuten hans så det er å forvente), men som produkt synes jeg rett og slett boka er upolert og uferdig. Cinnabar One har definitivt potensiale, men den kunne trengt 2-3 runder til med redigering.

Score: 2/5

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