Christoffer Petersen

Authentic Arctic Thrillers

Christoffer Petersen

In the beginning

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I never intended to write crime books or thrillers. Personally, I prefer fantasy and science fiction stories. Which might explain why there’s a hint of shamanism and spirits in my Greenland Missing Persons series, and some of the Maratse novellas, and, come to think of it, in Narkotika …  and then there’s The Ice Circus, and of course, the new character introduced in North Star Bay has a touch of the shaman about him.

Okay.

Maybe there’s quite a bit of fantasy in my writing.

However, before Christoffer Petersen there was Chris Paton, i.e. me.

He was supposed to forge a writing career with Steampunk novels. But it just didn’t turn out that way.

When I was done with my degree I was also really done with The Ice Star. I had written the whole book three times, changed so many things due to feedback from critique groups and lecturers – cue reason why I don’t use beta readers – it just wasn’t my book anymore. I chucked it to one side after graduation, and thought I would never pick it up again.

That’s when I wrote the first Steampunk book: Metal Emissary.

I loved it. It was so different, so fresh. I loved it so much I wrote three more books, and they got longer and longer. I bought covers, paid for marketing (can’t remember where), and posted about them all over Social Media. And I sold a whopping total of one book a month, sometimes two.

Maybe.

Unfortunately, it cost more to receive the payment in my bank account (don’t get me started on banks) than the royalties I earned from the book. I think every Steampunk book I have sold has cost me money, and they have not paid for their covers. Sigh.

Undeterred, I wrote more Steampunk books. I mean, it was going to happen? Right? It was just a matter of time.

Then, as I may have mentioned before, I quit my teaching job to go on an adventure. Jane and I joined our friends and their two kids for two months on the Yukon River, paddling from Whitehorse, Canada to Tanana, Alaska, USA. I was following in Jack London’s footsteps!

Without going into too much detail, suffice it to say that on my return I launched a revamped version of The Ice Star, made my own cover, and chucked it onto Amazon while I returned to the serious business of finding another teaching job.

At this point I could tell you what happened next, but I’ll save that for later.

What I really want to say is the success of The Ice Star, and the books that followed, combined with a change in author attitude (okay, and genre) have allowed me to come full circle. While I’m not going to stop writing crime books and thrillers, I am carving out time for a side hustle – in other words, writing fantasy, science fiction, and yes, Steampunk!

In my latest newsletter to subscribers I mentioned I was making a shift to my blog, and the reason for that is to write posts like this one which are less crime book oriented, but more me. I don’t “me oriented”, although I’m sure it sounds like that. 🙂 And it is a blog about me, so I guess it is. But what I mean to say is the blog is for anything I want to write, whereas readers who signed up for the newsletter did so for more crime and Greenland stuff.

There will be plenty of that here, but today is about me thinking about how I started, and sharing a free* short story with you.

The Impossible Floret is a cute and perilous(ish) Steampunk story I wrote earlier this year, and it takes me back to the beginning.

Chris

*You will need to add an email address to grab the free story. Your email address is used to record the download only. I will not add you to a mailing list.

Throwing a logline

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When I lived in England, one of my friends called Beef (he was the butcher’s son) showed me how you make sausage. It’s true, it’s one of those things probably best unseen, but I’ll never forget him cutting the fat away from the meat he was preparing at the counter and throwing it, together with bits of gristle and other “stuff”, across the shop and into a sausage making machine. There’s probably a name for such a machine, but I was more impressed with Beef’s aim, because he didn’t miss. However, with a smile he confirmed that it’s true, I probably didn’t want to know how you make sausage, or more to the point, I didn’t want to know what was in them.

This little flash from the past is your trigger warning. If you don’t want to know how I begin my stories, then look away now. 🙂

One of the modules of my degree was Screenwriting, and of all the modules I took it is the one that has had the greatest impression. I use one aspect of it regularly, and always at the start of a new project, just to see if it has legs. That module was my first introduction to loglines, but as you might know, we see them all the time. If you are a movie-goer then loglines are used to help you decide which movie to see. If you watch Netflix or any other streaming service, that same logline is used to help you decide what to stream. In fact, if you’re like me, you might spend more time reading the damn loglines than watching anything, begging the question – just how helpful are they?

My answer is really helpful.

Basically, a logline is 25 words to describe the gist of a story, usually the plot of a movie. I use them to figure out if my idea for a story is viable, and – sausage making alert – this is how I do it.

The 1st Pass

I try and write my idea in 25 words. So, for example, right now I am putting together short stories for my Kickstarter campaign. I’ve already teased the idea to the backer of this story and revealed the title, so here’s the logline for The Ice Breaker Quandary (yes, icebreaker in two words):

When a nuclear-powered icebreaker’s captain threatens to blow the reactor if Greenland won’t help him defect, Constable Petra Jensen enlists a passenger to stop him.

That’s 25 words, with an assist by the hyphen.

I’ve written a lot of loglines over the years, but often they start around 30 words or more. The trick is to be economical with your words. In this example, I’ve chosen to “spend” three words on Constable Petra Jensen, but I could have used two words: a policewoman, choosing policewoman instead of police officer to save a word. The loglines are for me, so I don’t worry about inclusive language. Also, I could have written a middle-aged American passenger, but even with an assist, that’s still four words when all I really need is one: passenger. I could also have written When the captain of a nuclear-powered icebreaker…, but When a nuclear-powered icebreaker’s captain is more economical, using five instead of seven words.

It takes some time, but I enjoy the process of dialing in to my basic plot, and I’m not worried about details. They come later during the writing process.

I’m not using my loglines like they do on Netflix. They are just for me. However, many of my loglines often end up in my story description, sometimes with no added words. I try not to embellish the logline because all I want is the roughest of outlines.

I like to know where I’m going in the story, who with, and why.

Some writers might say that’s amateurish, and one should write into the dark, starting with little more than a blank page. There’s nothing wrong with that, and neither is there anything wrong with having a detailed outline of every step of the story including comprehensive character notes and world-building “stuff”. But it’s a bit like the sausage machine, for God’s sake don’t show anyone. 🙂

My approach – closer to the dark but with a tiny candle in front of me – works for me.

A quick aside – the original photo (inverted for the cover) is taken from my kitchen window in Qaanaaq, Greenland. And yes, that’s a nuclear-powered Russian icebreaker (icebergs and glaciers in the background), now used as an adventure cruise ship for folks with far more money than me. And yet, they came to visit me (kind of), so it all works out in the end.

Stress Test 1 (or several)

I used to have a lot of passes and a lot of stress tests. I don’t anymore. I’m happy with the bare bones of the logline, but I do want to satisfy the demands of the logline I picked up from the screenwriting module.

According to somebody’s rules, a logline must include the who, what, why, when, where, and how of the story. Six things that, if present, ultimately suggest that the story “has legs” as I put it. At this point I could dive into what each of the things actually means, but let’s keep it simple:

  1. Who is your main character
  2. What is your problem or conflict (or subject)
  3. Why is the reason why your character must act
  4. When is the time in which your story is set (often the most difficult to write economically, so I cheat)
  5. Where is your setting
  6. How is the way your character solves the problem, or not (I also cheat with this one)

If you’re wondering about what comes first, yeah, keep wondering. I used to think that was important, but honestly, each element gets points just for showing up.

So, continuing with my own example:

When WHEN a nuclear-powered icebreaker’s captain WHAT threatens to blow the reactor WHY if Greenland WHERE won’t help him defect, Constable Petra Jensen WHO enlists HOW a passenger to stop him.

  1. When is a pain, so I cheated. It takes far too many words to write On a blustery summer’s day in 2018 so I don’t. Nor do I need to know exactly when. I’ll figure it out along the way.
  2. What is my problem to be solved, and that’s the captain going crazy in the reactor room. Or is he/she on the bridge? It doesn’t matter. That’s something else I’ll figure out along the way.
  3. Why is the reason to solve the what. Petra needs to get a wiggle on if she’s going to resolve this problem.
  4. Where is my setting. Perhaps the easiest part of the logline, although for the story description I might add something like in Qaanaaq, in the far north of Greenland but I don’t have room for that either.
  5. Who is dead easy. It’s hero time, and Petra is a star. But I like that she is a constable, so I spend a few words on her title, but drop her Greenlandic name: Piitalaat. I use it plenty in the stories! 😉
  6. How is where I cheat to the max, often because I don’t know how Petra is going to fix this one, and I’d rather not know because it’s more fun to find out. Often the candle I’m holding snuffs out long before this point, and I’m trying to keep up as Petra puzzles it out and saves the day. So the enlists is enough to let me know she’s going to get a passenger to do something, probably putting their lives at risk, but … nuclear-powered icebreaker??? … I’m guessing it’s worth it.

And that’s it, sausage made, ready for consumption, or in this case writing.

I used to have very detailed notes for every project, but the more I write the more I like to be surprised. However, I still like to know if a story works before diving in, and the logline helps.

Chris

Freedom

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I am an independent author. Sometimes, just saying it aloud helps. 🙂 There’s a lot of stigma attached to being “independent” and a lot of negativity, usually slung from publishers and those authors and aspirational authors who believe the traditional route is the one and only route to being published. Well, in 2021, all I can say is “good luck with that.”

Being independent gives me and authors like me the freedom to decide pretty much everything. It also means we have to own our mistakes along the way. Like everything, there’s a learning curve, but learning is a big part of the reward. Can I do things better? Sure. How do I do things better? Well, I go and learn from people better than me in that area.

But one of the true freedoms can be found in the creative process, including everything from writing to cover design. I’ve always done my own covers – some are better than others, some are far better than others, meaning I really should go back and change one or two of my covers. And, because I’m independent, free to make my own mistakes, I can.

This year, a good friend I met through writing but have never met, put me on to 3D art. I’ve always enjoyed playing around with images in Photoshop, but felt something was missing – in a nutshell, it was “people” or characters who were missing. With 3D models and assets a whole new world opened up, and I could put a face on my characters. Now, there’s a danger here, and anyone who read The Lord of the Rings before Peter Jackson’s films probably experienced the same identity crisis as I did when Elijah Wood became the new Frodo. So, if I add Petra, one of my main characters, to a book cover or promo image, as I have started doing, then readers might experience the same thing.

I think I just compared Petra to Frodo, there. 🙂

Whatever the consequences, I’m actually fine with it, as what I’ve discovered is a new string to the creative bow. Now, when I create covers or promotional images I find I am adding to the story. Sometimes playing around with a cover inspires a story, which is what happened last night when Petra went back in time (see cover image).

I don’t yet know when or if I’ll write this story, but I’m seriously considering it, just to shake things up a bit.

Being an indie author gives me the freedom to do that.

Chris

The things I don’t write about

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10 minutes of sun when it returns in Qaanaaq, February 19

When I lived in Qaanaaq I was, more or less, living at the top of the world. The sun disappeared in late October and came back late February. We were encouraged to carry a shotgun when going for a walk because polar bears denned in the area. And the temperatures dipped into the minus 40s (Celsius) during the time we lived there. There was one plane a week – often cancelled, and two supply ships a year – one in July and the other in September. These are the kinds of things I write about in my books and short stories.

But I made a promise to a colleague in Qaanaaq. She assumed when I left I would write a memoir or something similar, including anecdotes about people in Qaanaaq, or other parts of Greenland. We had both read such memoirs that focus on the negative side of Greenland. We talked about a Danish professional, psychologist – I think, who visited for a short period, ingratiated themselves into the community, and then wrote a damning report about the social aspects of life in a small Arctic community as soon as she got back to Denmark.

There’s a lot of that in Danish media, with much focus on the negative side of Greenland, leading to a lot of stereotypes and associations.

I made a promise to myself that I wouldn’t write such things. I chose and still choose to focus on the positive and strong characters I met in Greenland, and work those traits into my stories. I also add a lot of fun stuff to lighten the tone – in a lot of my books. I don’t mind writing “bad guys” into my stories, because every society has a mix of light and dark, and good and evil. But when nearly everything you read about Greenland focuses on alcohol or suicide, it’s hard to find the other stories.

I met so many strong, competent, and professional Greenlanders whom I worked with, and I met just as many lousy Europeans – a lot of Danes – who got a job in Greenland because they were not suited to the same work in Denmark. Talk about social dumping! You don’t hear about that in the Danish news.

Anyway, those strong colleagues and other professionals I met, and their kids, were my focus and my starting point. As was and is the environment, and the challenges it poses to life in Greenland – see polar bears, temperatures, and darkness above. 😉

I saw the other side of life too, dealt with it every day. When it comes to suicide, I’ve lost count of the people I knew who took their own life, including colleagues and a pupil I will never forget. I just don’t write about them. Rather, I write around them through my fiction, especially in my Constable Maratse novellas. A lot of those stories are inspired by my life and experiences in Greenland. Some are pure fiction, of course, others have more than a few grains of truth in them.

However, if you want to know more about the other side of Greenland, the hard truths, then you should read them from a Greenlandic perspective. Not mine. I write fiction, often a rather romanticized Jack Londonesque story (as I call it) heavy on drama. I’m telling stories. Pure fiction, teased out of my experiences. Niviaq Korneliussen, however, writes about hard truths, and she just won the Nordic Council Literature Prize for her work.

In my mind, because there are relatively few English language books about Greenland, my books act as an introduction, with many readers commenting that Greenland wasn’t on their radar before they found my books. If my books encourage readers to discover more about Greenland, its people, culture, history, and stunningly harsh environment, then I’ve done my job. I will continue to write about strong characters because Greenland is full of them. And I will continue to body swerve most of the darker stuff, because it’s not my place.

And I made a promise, and those are the things I don’t write about.

Chris

Sit down and make stuff up

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Yesterday, I had a rant, I think. But when I think about what my job entails, yesterday’s worries or niggles are just so yesterday. Ultimately, my job is really simple. I sit down and I make stuff up. Sometimes I might stand up, record notes or chapters for transcribing, or maybe go for a run to puzzle out a problem, but more often than not I sit down and type. I’ve been through a few keyboards, and my preferred writing computer – a laptop smaller and lighter than an iPad – has very few symbols left on the keys. I guess it helps when writing mysteries.

Okay. Bad pun.

But what “helps” is the whole idea of not knowing what will happen next. I love that. I also love it when I get an idea that could fit with something else, but will need a good shoehorn to make it work. Which is where I’m at today.

I ran a Kickstarter recently, and some generous backers chose the option of getting written into one of my Greenland stories as a character, interacting with my main characters. I’m in full swing working on those stories, and am very excited about how they might fit into the current “canon”. The stories are scheduled to be sent this Christmas Eve, so no spoilers here. But I can’t help sharing a cover, just for fun.

While I thought these short stories might be standalone, it’s more fun for me to make them a part of the whole thing. Yes, this will involve playing with the timeline a little, but they will be “point fives” and can be read later (obviously) without spoiling the stories that come before or after.

They are personalized stories with “real” people fictionalized for the plot. They will also be published over Christmas, but not before they have been sent to the new “characters” first.

Lots to do.

Lots to make up!

Chris

Owning it

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This isn’t supposed to be a rant. More an epiphany of sorts, about owning it.

If you’ve followed my blog or my newsletter, you’ll know that they have often been sporadic at best, with the blog suffering the most. I’ve tried different ideas to gain momentum and to provide content of interest – for free, or cheaply – but I just haven’t found that “something” I felt comfortable with. As an author, I’m supposed to do “something” and create a buzz around my books, or even better, a buzz about something that has nothing to do with my books, but folk might be interested in. Well, sorry, but I write a lot, and when I’m not writing, I don’t really want to write about something just because I’m supposed to.

This is connected to Social Media and fact that I made a point of dumping SoMe in 2020, having got rid of most of it before then. It was the constant reminder to “write a post” or “share” something from the different platforms that drove me nuts. I had nothing to say. I was already saying plenty in my books, short stories, whatever. Then there was the toxicity, and when I saw how supposedly mature, respectable, businessmen were trashing Greta Thunberg – I don’t know how she deals with that. I couldn’t. I dumped Twitter. It was the last thing I had. I had already dumped Facebook, and then in 2020 I set about going Google free.

It’s awfully, awfully quiet when you get rid of SoMe.

I lapsed a few times, tried LinkedIn again thinking it was different and more professional, and lasted about eight hours – apologies to the people I know in real life who I added as contacts, and then bailed again. But it was okay, I had my newsletter. But then, in trying to go Google free, I changed my email to a private email by a company that puts privacy first. I love it. It totally works for me, but gets treated as spam by almost every other email provider out there.

Awfully quiet, like I said.

Then I blogged a bit, on my website, while shopping around for a more robust form of a newsletter. I tried Substack, then left after the first Facebook-like notification popped in that I could get more subscribers if I posted something. No shit. Really? I returned a month later, set the whole thing up, and then left it sitting there for a bit. Haven’t blogged yet. But I did find the button to get rid of the notifications.

Then Goodreads, which I personally use a lot to track my own reading, and as an author to promote my books a bit. This blog feeds into the blog on my Goodreads author page. But each time I posted a photo, it left a blank. Only smileys worked. So I stopped posting images, and ended up with a pretty boring blog – here and on Goodreads. Cue image right now:

 

Halloween in Greenland – only a day late!

So who am I doing all this for?

SoMe wants me to post, post, post to create traffic and to market the shit out of it. Google and Co. want me to be really active, use all their products, and then they will scrape all the data they can sell from them. And the alternatives to blogging and newslettering (?) just .. don’t .. work for me. And every one of them talks about creating a platform. Which is another word for create traffic for the marketing department to use to drive sales.

And yet, early this year, I amped up my website, and I have to say, I’m loving it. All my stuff in one place. All my books, stories… just everything, all here. And I own it. At least, I’m paying for it, which means it’s not free, and as far as I know there’s no scraping or marketing or whatever beyond the usual stuff. And, most importantly, there’s no bot telling me that readers are missing me when I haven’t posted for a day or so. But you know what? Because I didn’t engage in or write nasty comments, or call people out for … anything … my stuff was so bland I never benefited from the algorithms anyway. I was too nice. Too bland.

Here’s a smiley for being bland, and for Goodreads. 🙂

So, about owning it.

I pay for this website, so I guess I’m owning that part of it. But I also want to own what I do with it. So I’m going to blog for me and throw stuff out there, not caring if anyone reads it, or if anyone likes it. It’s for me. If someone finds some value in it, and chooses to follow or read the blog. Great.

I’m going to use it for me, and for lack of finding anything better or more fun than this website, I’ll post stuff about my books, new things on the way or just updates and stuff here. Such as revamping my payhip store as a means of making my writing more sustainable. There’s a link for that. Or maybe some 3D art, because I love playing around with that. Whatever, and whenever, but all my own, meaning I’m owning the words, pictures, or at least owning the action behind writing and posting it. Not because some big tech company benefits from it, but because I benefit from the writing of it.

Is this a rant? Sure. Probably. But it’s my rant.

I own it.

Chris