Christoffer Petersen

Authentic Arctic Crime books and Thrillers

Advent

Singing the last wild song of winter!

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I’ve mentioned the advent books, and this is just a quick plug to mention again The Last Wild Song of Winter. Maratse, in his own quiet way, suggested he might need an advent calendar, and this is it – and a very Jack Londonesque one it is too.

The basic premise is a story for each day in December from the 1st to the 24th when the Greenlanders celebrate Christmas.

Maratse is his usual reserved self, but he has company as he and a criminal – that’s up to you to decide – are trapped in an isolated cabin as the temperature drops. They tell stories to get through the worst of the endless night each night, and each story leads Maratse closer to a conclusion, and helps him decide on the necessary action he must take before Christmas Eve.

It’s a simple concept which I hope will have you hooked this December.

Here’s the book page, and the shameless Amazon link! Just 0.99 until the day of release.

Chris

Advent Books from Greenland!

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While I’ll never pretend to be Christian, I have to say I enjoy Christmas. Actually, I enjoy the feel of it more than the actual it, if that makes any sense? But part of enjoying Christmas, for me, is creating my own traditions, one of them is the Criminal Advent Calendar. 😉 I’ve written four of them so far, with just one year when I missed. I wrote The Ice Circus that year. That was my Christmas book in 2019.

Each advent book is supposed to be read like an advent calendar, with a chapter (or episode) for each day. It can be challenging to write, as a lot can happen in a day. But to be true to the form of a traditional Scandinavian Christmas Calendar, the heroes (and villains) can only do so much as they must wait for the next day in December before acting on what happened the day before.

Some readers have struggled to wait, too.

I love that. 😉

I’ve written follow-on books to The Calendar Man and Invisible Touch, but those two books are the calendar books. Yule at Aurora Station is last year’s advent calendar. It was only supposed to consist of a story for each Advent Sunday, but I got carried away and made sure there was an entry for each Advent Sunday and every day in December. The Last Wild Song of Winter consists of interconnected stories with a new story for each day in December until Christmas Eve when the Greenlanders celebrate Christmas.

Yule at Aurora Station is the most magical as, 1) Luui is in it (but all grown up) and 2) because I couldn’t help myself. I stuffed all kinds of spirits – good and bad – into that book, and I loved every second of writing it. The other three books are less fantastical, but hopefully magical in their own way.

The links above will take you to the book pages on this website, while the links below are the usual links to Amazon.

These are the advent books I have written so far, although you might want to come back tomorrow for some BIG NEWS! 😉

Chris

Yule at Aurora Station – 4th Advent, Part 4

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The final installment of Yule at Aurora Station is LIVE!

The story concludes in typically dramatic style and then continues over the last few days from the fourth Advent Sunday to Christmas Eve.

Has Luui saved Christmas?

Is there hope for the Arctic?

And what happens next?

Grab your copy today and find out!

You might prefer the complete edition, also available via Payhip or Amazon.

Yule at Aurora Station – 3rd Advent, Part 3

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And we’re live with Yule at Aurora Station, Part 3!

Things are heating up for Luui in the far north, as the stakes get higher and the magic bigger, badder (if that’s a word), and beyond her control.

Yule at Aurora Station is a fantastic blend of Greenlandic myth, climate change, greed, and friendship. I’ve gone all in with beasts and spirits and I’m good with that. I’m just not entirely sure how Luui is going to get out of this one.

Will she save Christmas?

Honestly, with everything that’s going on, Christmas is the least of her worries!

If you’re joining me on this journey each Advent Sunday, or waiting to grab the entire story once it is done (something Jane prefers), I just want to say thanks. I’ve added bonus material in the form of another desktop wallpaper.

Oh, and slight spoiler alert, someone from Luui’s past turns up in this one.

Yule at Aurora Station – 1st Advent, Part 1

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Things always take longer than expected, and it doesn’t help when I suddenly want to experiment with a new cover idea.

And see, I’m waffling already, when I what I should be doing is introducing you to a new story set on the first Advent Sunday of Christmas now available to download.

I explain more about the story on the page for Yule at Aurora Station, but I just thought I’d talk around it here.

As I’ve mentioned before, December in Greenland is incredibly dark, i.e. no sun. So celebrating Advent, especially if it fell in November, was an opportunity to get the decorations up fast to beat back the winter dark. This really worked in Uummannaq, with a red or green paper star lit with a light bulb in the window of nearly every house in that tiny town on a remote island in the Arctic. The snow reflected the Christmas colours and the Northern Lights blazed in the sky.

Romantic?

You betcha!

So, with that in mind, you might better understand my love of Christmas and the reason why I am often compelled to write a Christmas story.

Yule at Aurora Station is a Christmas story in four parts, one for each Sunday this Christmas.

It’s a little different than my usual crime novels and novellas, and with that in mind I’m giving away the first part for free via a link to my payhip store. (Please note, you will be asked for an email address to register the “sale”, but you are not being added to a mailing list.)

Readers of my Greenland Missing Persons series will be familiar with a certain five-year-old, and she’s back, but she’s all grown up. Luui Angakkuarneq stars in this cute, fantastical story about a pregnant polar bear – the last polar bear in a rapidly diminishing Arctic.

Die-hard crime readers have bailed at this point, and I don’t blame you. 🙂

But if you want to read something a little different this Christmas, then each short instalment of Yule at Aurora Station might be just what you need. It’s packed with Arctic goodness, goons, and mythical creatures. And a little magic, of course.

As I said, Part 1 is free, so you can try before you buy. Each part thereafter will be $0.99 and bundled for $2.99 later in December. Yule at Aurora Station is about 100 pages long in total. I will release the parts via links in a blog post and on the book page on this website.

Here’s a quick overview:

  1. Sunday November 28 Yule at Aurora Station – Part 1 (FREE)
  2. Sunday December 5 Yule at Aurora Station – Part 2
  3. Sunday December 12 Yule at Aurora Station – Part 3
  4. Sunday December 19 Yule at Aurora Station – Part 4

I hope you enjoy Part 1 as much as I enjoyed writing it.

Have a great Sunday! Oh, and apologies to readers from Australia, as I’m pretty sure it’s Monday already.

Advent Eve

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It really is a thing – Advent Eve. Rather, it’s the night before the first Advent of Christmas 2021.

Full confession, I’m not religious. I did find my baptism certificate the other day, but that’s as close as I get.

So the whole Advent “thing” is really just extended Christmas for me.

It’s also something that has stuck from Greenland.

December is incredibly dark in northern Greenland. In Uummannaq we had an hour or so of grey twilight. In Qaanaaq we had nothing. If there was no snow or ice on the ground to reflect the moonlight, we had less than nothing. One Christmas it rained, and the snow melted, resulting in super dark.

Not pleasant.

What is pleasant in Greenland over Christmas is the way every house – every house – has a coloured paper star with a light bulb hanging in the window. There are more lights, candles, decorations of all kinds all over the villages and settlements.

In the towns too, but I spent most of my winters in the more remote parts of Greenland.

Greenlanders celebrate Christmas with light to push back the dark. And then, at Christmas, there’s even more cause for celebration as we know the light is on its way back. It’ll take some time, but just knowing it’s coming is a huge boost to winter morale.

So, I hope you’ll celebrate with me this Advent Eve because tomorrow I’ll post the first of Luui’s Advent stories.

I’ll be back tomorrow with a link for the first part of Yule at Aurora Station.

Chris