So remember when I had a bunch of blogs lined up to fill this empty time? Well, neither did I…
I was writing a book, okay?
Life is also insane, even between jobs.
So let’s go through the list of everything that’s been going on.
I was accepted into the 2022 Snorri Program! No it’s not about napping! It is a program I applied to on a whim and I am going to Iceland in June and July! I will have five weeks in my distant mother country, learning the language, working, and going on adventures. I am so humbled, honoured and all the other words used to describe a surprise and elation that makes you feel like your floating.
New job in a Winnipeg restaurant coming soon!
I took a comic making class with Lisa Bryski and GMB Chomichuk. We had an absolutely blast talking about storytelling every Monday for two months with several brilliant creators. The class was run specifically for doctors finding creativity but it was an exceptionally brilliant class about storytelling, writing tools and unfettered creativity. I hope the class continues and others can pick their brains.
Now let’s go through everything I’ve been writing;
Duel of Princes — this is the big one, this was my primary focus for the last three months. What began as a novella about the cyclical nature of violence… escalated into an epic of heightened emotions, battles, hyper-violence and revenge. It currently stands at 84,000 words.
When a duel between two princes for the hand of a princess ends with an indecisive conclusion, it becomes the basis to a war between Viking-esk warlords on the Wrong Side of the Veil in backwoods of central Canada. It’s flawed, and I hope to work through it in the future. Through this conflict I wanted to explore a world I had already built, but with characters and a story that reflects the contradictions of the world they find themselves in.
A story of hidden Vikings in Canada requires exploration of the connection that has to colonialism and white supremacy, which continued to double-down on the themes of pointless violence and cruelty. It is also an unabashed worship of the harsh beauty of Canada, my home. The original ideas for this story came from just simple observations of the countryside, the forests, the lakes and marshes of the Canadian Shield and prairies.
I ended up pitching this at the end of my comic class and I was suggested to turn this into a graphic novel in the future. Possibly? For now it shall sit and when the time is right, I will give it a proper reading.
It’s a dark piece, bleak to the extreme, but I think also one of my best. We will see what the future brings?
Trail to Iron Ridge — A smaller piece, about 10,000 words, I worked on throughout the fall and winter, but finished in the New Year. This will become a piece of my next collection. Influenced by westerns like The Ballad of Buster Scruggs and Buck and The Preacher, but with dinosaurs… we follow a mother and son—recently Exposed to the world of the Wrong Side—must cross ‘carnivore territory’.
Gila the Skull Titan — A rebuild of a previous draft where a precautious child stumbles into a battle between prehistoric monsters… it is escalating into a longer story set in Mexican areas of the Wrong Side, where a young woman is being put in position between choosing a good marriage or her education, when a storm and attacks from prehistoric monsters compels her to make education her future. I’m currently drafting it, which sets it as my most current story for the next Veiled Sagas Collection. Aiming for 6-8,000 words.
Wild Things Collection – The prospective third major Veiled Sagas Collection will ideally be coming out in November-December 2022. A much different schedule than the previous two collections, but between the pandemic, the war in Ukraine, employment troubles and the aforementioned life changes, I decided to give myself more time to continue to learn my craft, experiment and edit. A call for beta readers will be announced soon. Where Bloodied was about bloody battles and gory sacrifices, and Black as Night was focused on the darkest corners of the Veiled Sagas, Wild Things focuses on monsters, barbarians, prehistoric battles and the wild natural places of The Wrong Side. Think Genndy Tartakovsky’s Primal with hints of JAWS, Godzilla, Conan the Barbarian and Stephen King thrown in.
In conclusion, it’s been a busy few months. I am working hard to improve my writing, draft a backlog of works to draw on in years to come. New life responsibilities, changes and surprises will leave me less time to write and work on books, but I have many cunning plans ahead.
To this new year and this crazy world we venture forth.
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Thank you!
ZFSigurdson 