Authentic Arctic Thrillers
I met William Burton McCormick in Iceland, just as Iceland Noir was wrapping up. I think we escaped the disco for a coffee and an intense chat about books and publishing. I’ve since read several of Bill’s stories, and really like his main character Santa.
Nope.
Not that Santa!
I could tell you more, or you could discover Santa for yourself in Bill’s short story: The Dunes of Saulkrasti. It’s a really good read with a nice twist. Several, in fact.
Chris
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.
And there I was, ported into my favourite video game…
Actually, that’s not so very far from the truth. Unfortunately, the pandemic created a weird pseudo reality for me (and the whole world), as I was forced to wear a mask when venturing outside the house. I have no problem wearing a mask for health reasons. But between you and me, it was also fun – at least in the beginning – as I saw similarities between the real world and my favourite waste of time: a video game called The Division, set in the midst of a pandemic.
I can’t say I was living the dream, but the two worlds did collide, and even more so when the shops refused to take cash. Dollar bills were used to spread the “virus” in the video game.
Okay, still with me? I’ll get to the point …
Even before I played The Division, I was fascinated by it, and even wrote fanfiction set in the video game world as light relief when writing The Ice Star for my final dissertation for my Masters. Yes, I wrote as a distraction from writing. If that isn’t a little strange, well … it is strange.
LitRPG short for Literary Role Playing Game is also a little strange.
It’s a genre combining computer RPGs with science fiction and fantasy novels. Yes, I took that straight from Wikipedia. I’ve read a little in this genre, and think it is fun and refreshing. I’ve even contemplated writing some. But those pesky algorithms ensured I didn’t dare write LitRPG under the name Christoffer Petersen. However, no one knows who Bran Nicholls is, and so, if you think this sounds like a terribly bad idea, and you’re still curious, then you might want to grab a free LitRPG story written by me, as Bran Nicholls, from BookFunnel.
I’ve created a page for the short story on this site too, just for fun.
We’ve stopped wearing masks in Denmark, but we haven’t put the spares too far away. While I sincerely hope we figure this pandemic out, I know there are plenty more fictional ones to be explored, and, sadly, many more to be expected in the real world too.
Top book tip: Spillover by David Quammen. In my opinion, it is the book about how we ended up here. Fascinating reading, if you can stomach it.