Newly Published: Skrymers Glove

Newly Published Science Fiction and Norse Mythology blend!

Note: A special offer for you at the buttom of the post!

Skrymers Glove

War in the Milky Way!Two races, Aseir and Vanes, have allied against the brutal Yetten forces bent on dominating the entire galaxy. During experimentation with the Fyrkat device on planet Earth, two human children, Tjalfe and Roeskva, are abducted by the Yetten and now it´s up to Thor, Loki, Balder, Freya and Sif to rescue them. Unfortunately there is a traitor among them and evidence does point to Loki, Thor´s best friend and Thor struggles with the questions burning inside: could Loki really be the traitor or is something else going on? And will they succeed in saving the children´s lives?

Why I wrote the story:
I´m a big fan of Science Fiction and one of my favorite shows is "Star Gate" including all of its spin-offs (and yes, that includes the SGU-series, which I found to be much more of a brainy series than than the others)

What I particularly like about these series is the way they integrate mythology from all parts of the world: Greek mythology, Egyptian mythology and Norse mythology. The very idea that all of these mythologies originate from visits on planet Earth from various races of the universe is both intriguing and intertextual consistent.

However, as I watched the ongoing stories of these series, I found it increasingly annoying that the Norse Mythology was so badly presented, as in 'flawed.'

For one thing, Thor and co. are called 'Asgards,' which is a funny way (not funny as in 'rofl,' but funny as in 'hmmm... strange...') of using the name of their home as a noun. The correct name of the Norse gods is 'Aser' in Danish (plural) and in English it would be 'Aseir'

But even worse, Loki is depicted as a renegade Aseir, when in fact he´s a renegade Yetten, who has joined the Aseir and more often than not is on the Aseir side fighting against the Yetten.

I wanted to write a story, where these things were corrected and began writing the story "The Legend of Hjarne´s Island," but after some time I got stuck as I began feeling that there was a story before "Legend."

Then one day, when I was surfing the internet and watching Youtube-videos, I stumbled on this video made by Hauke Vagt, a German illustrator and his brother (who´s name I am sorry to admit I don´t know)

The video tells the story of a Swedish diving team, who found a strange object in the Baltic Sea in 2011 and last year they went back to investigate further. Hauke Vagt has produced this video suggesting that maybe the anomaly was an ancient space ship crashing millenia ago.

I was intrigued at this idea and found it to fit very well with my upcoming novel and decided to integrate it in my story.

So, there you have it: Skrymers Glove is the story about how Tjalfe and his sister, Roeskva, were abducted by Yetten aliens, (maybe) rescued by Thor, Sif, Freya, Baldur and Loki and their story started the Norse Mythology!

Skrymers Glove is available at:

Kindle only:
Amazon - UK
Amazon - US
Amazon - DE
Amazon - FR
Amazon - ES
Amazon - IT
Amazon - JP
Amazon - CA
Amazon - BR

Various formats, including Kindle, PDF and EPUB (readable on most devices)
Smashwords - all countries

A gift for you!
If you want the book at half price, there´s a 'new publishing discount' right now, which means that you can get the book for only $2.50! All you have to do is go to Smashwords.com and use this discount code: CL97Z

Enjoy the book! And if you´d like to review it, I´ll really be looking forward to it!

New Science Fiction underway - wanna help?

Do you love Science Fiction?
Do you love Norse Mythology?

If so, maybe you will find the idea of a blend between them quite intriguing.

This is exactly the plot of my Science Fiction Novel, "Skrymer´s Glove," which was published in Danish on the 17th of October last year. Right now, I´m struggling with a translation and will hopefully have the book ready for publishing in English within the next few months.

But, alas... I have come to realize I need help. Even though my English is certainly above average, there are issues with grammar and sentence structure, I have trouble overcoming.

This is where you might come in.

I´m in search for people, who love Science Fiction (or books in general) and want to help me edit the book for grammar, spelling and the flow of the text. Anyone participating will of course receive a free copy of the finished eBook (I´m working to find a solution, so that you can get a hard copy, but no promises there...)

This is how it works:

1. Write a comment in the field below or send me an email to: perholbo@gmail.com
2. You will then receive a copy of the draft in RTF, which is a standard format that can be opened by almost every editing programme such as word, openoffice and iPages
3. Read the draft and insert your comments as you see fit. If you´re one of those people who find grammar to be the most important thing in the world, focus on grammar. If your main competence is in the field of making a text flow, focus on text flow. If you prefer doing body count, please do that. Whatever makes you tick. As long as you comment on the text, so that I have something to work with.
4. When you´re ready, send the RTF back to me using the before mentioned email. I prefer receiving all comments integrated into an RTF-file, but if you have trouble saving the file as RTF, we´ll work out that problem as well.
5. I will then read through all your comments and based on them I will edit the book and send it to all of you, again as an RTF-file.
6. If after reading the edited file, you still have comments, please feel free to do so, but this is not an obligation.
7. Based on the second set of comments (if there are any) I will re-edit the book and publish it through Smashwords.com, Amazon.com and other channels and you will receive a discount code to obtain your full and freely readable copy of the book in your preferred format, that being any of the formats listed here.

Hoping to see you participate,
Regards, Per Holbo

Read me a story, dad!

- how you can improve your children´s skills and have a good time while doing it...

One of the most important things when raising children is having a relationship with them. Many parents, especially fathers, aren´t connecting with their kids enough. For many years I had this problem and in some ways I still do. The funny thing is that being a parent, there should be every reason to find connecting with your children an easy task. Opposed to many other relationships, we always have at least one thing in common with our kids: we have been children ourselves. Still it seems like quite the task to remember being a kid.

But here´s a tip: read your children a story. A story is a good way to connect with your children and frankly, it doesn´t take that much of an effort. All you have to do is find a good story and set aside the time to read it. I promise you, that you will connect with your children this way. A story has the potential of becoming alive when you read it out loud and by doing this, you and your children have something together. Reading a story is a journey for the both of you and it doesn´t even matter, if you´ve read the story yourself before or not. If you´ve read it before, you are most likely to discover new things in the story and if you choose a story you´ve read before, chances are, you chose this particular one, because you liked it when you were a kid. And if so, chances are that your kid will love it every bit as much as you do.

If you choose a story neither of you have read before, reading it becomes a new venture for you and your children. You experience it together and you connect with each other because this story is yours in the journey you take together.

And you know what? In this day and age, finding a story has never been easier! Go to Amazon, Barnes&Noble, Smashwords, iBooks or any other major retailer and buy an eBook. They are cheap and you can get the book within less than 10 minutes!

So, what´s to stop you? Lack of time? Take the time! Don´t know what to read? Anything you like or think you like! (My fairy tale ‘The Knight in Shouting’ fits well with girls who like Princesses and it´s good for building self esteem, but there are many other stories as well, if you think it´s a bit too commercial of me to suggest it)

Oh, one more thing: reading with your kids the most important advantage is connecting with them and building a relationship, but there is a neat side effect as well: reading with your kids stimulates their language and  literary skills! And downsides? There are none!

Remember this: reading a story doesn´t take much time and it´s an investment you will never regret making!

Your turn! - Share your experiences with reading stories or ask questions...

Norse myth narrative

Writing the Asgard Saga is no less than a real treat to me. Not only do I love the stories, but working with them in a more modern narrative form is very rewarding. These stories have been handed down from generation to generation and were not written down before some time in the early 13th century after the chance from Heathen religion to Christianity. This brings a challenge differing from, say the Christian or Jewish texts.


The Jewish tradition is different from the Viking tradition, because the storytelling of the latter wasn´t a "to-the-letter" handing down. The base line was more important than telling the stories exactly in the same way, whereas the Jewish tradition demanded the handing down of myth and stories to be told word for word. This means that the stories from the Bible are very accurate. They are told in the original languages almost exactly as they were told 500, 1000 or even 5000 years ago.

The Norse myths aren´t this accurate and in time some of the stories have changed some of their meaning. For instance, there is some doubt as to weither Odin and Frey were married or not.

The most important thing, however, is that I want to make as good a balance as possible between telling the stories in such a way that the characters come alive, but still honors the original stories. This is a difficult task, mostly due to the narrative tradition of Norse Mythology, where the characters are flat, meaning that they lean towards action rather than the characters´ mindsets and characteristics behind the action.

This is their strength, but it also makes it difficult to describe who these characters really are. For instance, the stories do not reveal Odin as having a devious mind, but his actions are either devious or he is not aware of the results of his actions. Of course, the stories tell little by little that he IS devious, but you have to read quite a few of the myths to catch that.

That´s why I really enjoy writing my interpretation of these myths. It´s a challenge to bring the stories to life and give my readers a good reading experience without being unfaithful to the messages of the myths.

I am very much looking forward to getting feedback from all you people out there, just waiting for the first volume to come out and as a treat, I want to share with you the cover for the book. It´s not entirely finished yet and it may look somewhat different when I publish, but this is what I´ve got so far:

I hope, you´ve enjoyed reading my blog posts on the Norse Mythology and I can assure you, that I´m not even close to being finished with it yet. There will be more to come.

Do you like the cover?

Feel free to comment, even if you really, really hate the cover!

World Time and Writing Time

Today I was at a meeting in one of my networks and one of the members asked me how things were going with the writing and pusblishing. I explained to her that I´d come fairly well out of Read an eBook Week and was looking forward to getting one of my novels done so that I could publish it. Then she asked me something that made me think:


"When you write," she said, "do you lock yourself in a room with no connection to the world outside for a week or so to better concentrate on your writings?"


Instantly I got the picture in my head of some author with writer´s blog leaving the world behind and travelling to some worn out cottage in the wilderness so far away from civilization that there are no phones, radio or internet.

I answered that I usually write when I am alone, but that I need to have people around me during the day in order to function in my life.


But when I drove home that question seemed to have hooked itself on to my main thought stream. I began asking myself a simple question with a complexe and unfinished answer:


"From where do I draw inspiration and how do I get it written into words?"


It may seem simple enough, but the fact is that I really had to think about it. Actually I´m still thinking about it.
One thing I know for sure is that I wouldn´t be able to write a single coherent sentence or come up with even the roughest sketch of a character, if I close myself off to the real world.


On the other hand I also need time alone to think and to write. Time where I´m sure to not get interrupted and all my thoughts and plots wander off to another dimension.


It seems to me that all of this is a fine balance. Too much active "World Time" prevents me from thinking and writing but not enough "World Time" will eventually kill my "muse," so to speak.


I haven´t to a full extend found the right abalcne and I have the notion that this balance is never really found. I´m even beginning to think that if I was at some point in time getting very close to such a balance, it would not be for long, because the right balance would then have changed - because I change, my family changes, the world changes...


Even if you are not a writer and even if you are not a creative person, you may have similar balances to balance in your life.

How do YOU find balance?

The wasted young - on traditional and Indie publishing

"The youth now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers."

Perhaps you´ve seen the above statement before. Supposedly it was said by Socrates in his defense speech when he was acused of corrupting society. If this is true or it´s a hoax made by either Platon or Xenophon is unknown, but the fact remains that it´s been written by the students of Socrates and thereby we can safely say that someone thought these thoughts in ancient Greece.

Recently I read a quote by a simple farmer that is even more to the point:

“Things today are not what they used to be - and they never have!”

“What does this have to do with Indie vs. Traditional publishing?” you may ask.

Well, it really is quite simple:

Every generation feels threatened by the culture and views of the next and this is apparently also the case for generations of publishers and authors.

Try watching the underneath clip from youtube. It´s in Norwegian, but someone has been kind enough to provide a translation in English. When you´ve watched it, please read on, because I have some important points to make:

Medieavel Help Desk

A friend and fellow author wrote on his blog:

“One of my university lecturers told a friend to tell me that if I self-publish it might ruin my chances of being traditionally published or entering competitions.” - you can read the entire post here.

Why would any publisher or host of a writing competition rule out selfpublishers? Do they not want good quality? Or could it be that they would rather have uniformity in views on how to properly publish?

Indie Authoring threaten to shift the power balance 

I think it has to do with defending your livelihood. If Indie Authoring becomes main stream, how would publishers make money and survive the publishing business?

Thus, it would seem to be better to try giving selfpublishers a bad name and start rumours about poor quality and bad editing. And yes, there a examples of both in the Indie World, but quite frankly: so is the case with traditional publishing.

Are there more poor quality in Indie books than in others?

Well, to be honest, I think there is, but for one thing, it´s going in the right direction as the readers simply won´t read bad quality and thereby bad writers and writers publishing bad edited books won´t sell their books. In time, bad quality will diminish to a level competing well with traditional published books. And we are almost there…

And this brings me to the point I want to  make:

Really, the publishing war is not a question of quality, but a question of “who makes money and for what services?”

But it doesn´t sound good if traditional publishing companies use this argument, does it?

“We think, Indie Publishing should stop, because it shifts the balance of power and we are beginning to make less money than before!”

Hmmm…. Not a solid case, is it?

It sounds much more reasonable to come up with all sorts of excuses and statements about quality and reading experience - just like you saw the munk in the video clip complaining about this new world of books, where things aren´t as they used to be.

Examples are vast 

I could continue for hundreds of pages with examples that Indie Authoring is a good idea that will not go away, but it would bore you, I think.

Instead, I´ll tell you something quite interesting:

About a decade ago, a single mum received no less than 25 rejections on her manuscript for a children´s book, before a small publisher decided to take her in as a new author.

That author was J.K.Rowlings and the book was “Harry Potter and the sorcerers stone.”

Imagine, if she decided to believe the publishers word that the book wasn´t any good?

Making you characters believable

It´s been way too long since I´ve written about the issue of how to write, so here´s another post on the subject:


Would you read a story about someone you don´t find interesting?

One of the main reasons any person would continue reading a book is that they connect with the characters in some way.


It doesn´t have to be in such a way that the reader finds the character to be similar to themselves. In fact that is rarely the case. But the characters must be described in such a way that:


1. They seem to be alive
2. The reader can recognize some of their own characteristics in the character
3. The reader is intrigued by some of the characteristics that are completely different from the reader´s own characteristics.


That´s why you need to begin with the beginning. Tell your readers about your characters and their back grounds. It´s much easier to understand why a person does what he does if you have that basic information about them. And sometimes, when neither you, the author, or the reader understand a characters actions, at least his actions seem to fit his personality.


How to make you character alive
When I attended college we performed the musical "West Side Story." I played the part of Riff, the leader of "The Jets" and in the end of an act (don´t remember which one, sorry) I and another character were both killed and lay dead on the stage. The best way would have been for the lights to fade away and the curtains to fall, but we performed in the college hall way, so there were no curtains. Instead, we had to sneak out with the lights off so that the audience wouldn´t notice. We had prepared ourselves for this and we knew exactly the right time to move, so that it wouldn´t be too early and ruin the magic moment of silence, but still not so late, that the audience had gotten used to the dark and could see us leaving.


At the opening night we lay there and counted the seconds and at exactly the right moment we moved. But as soon as we got to our feet, someone turned on the lights and there we were: two dead people standing alive in plain sight for everyone to see. It really ruined the moment...


The lesson to be learned here is quite simple: if your character does something that is completely off course to his personality or the circumstances at hand - in this case dead men walking - it ruins the magic and the reader will be sucked through the portal between the makebelieve world and the real world. And if this happens, you can´t expect to be able to bring the reader back.


So, in all respects: keep the magic and live the makebelieve life in your writings. Failure to do so will put off your readers.


Making a connection between reader and character
Among authors there is a saying: show it, don´t tell it. What it means is that instead of explaining a characters personality using a description, it´s much better to show personality with action.


Really, it should be apparent if we consider how we interact with real people. When you meet someone new, you can´t get into their heads and read their minds and you can´t know anything about their history. So what is it that we do instead? Well, we look at their behaviour and listen to what they say.


An example from my short story, "The Mysterious Disappereance of McGrath:"


"McGrath had a bad temper and got into fights with everyone everywhere" would be an explanation, but if the writer chooses to put in some of McGrath´s interactions with other people showing his temper, the story comes more to life, somewhat like this:


"His landlord stood there by the door for a few seconds building up his nerve, which granted McGrath just enough time to get himself seated in his well used armchair before he heard the reluctant tapping on solid wood. He almost thrust the chair through the wall in anger.

“What!”

“Hmmf…” the frightened man said loosening his tie and gasped, “I…well…it got stuck.” McGrath didn’t re-enter his home, but instead almost flew past his landlord while complaining loudly about all the vultures the world was populated with."

The main reason is that the storyteller, that is: the author, is an alien presence in the book and should be held to an absolute minimum to present the story as real life like as possible.


But! There is one difference between real life and the makebelieve world: time! Living your life has it´s paste and in most cases you don´t get to really know anyone in just a few hours. It takes time. And time you don´t have when reading a book. Here the time passes completely different than in real life and even the paste is different from passage to passage.


So, having said that "show, don´t tell" is very important, sometimes authors forget the first part of the saying, so instead the story will be "don´t tell it." If you don´t use the advantage of writing, meaning that you can actually get into people´s heads and read their minds and that you can get to knwo their history in just a few sentences, you may very well loose your reader.


By the end of the first few chapters you would be lucky to have half of your readers still reading the story.


So always remember to tell the story of your characters, if you want your readers to understand where they are coming from. Your readers do not always have to understand why the character does what it does, but your characters´ actions must always be coherent with their personality and if your reader does not have the basic back ground of your character, they will be absolutely lost trying to determine if the characters´ actions ARE coherent with their personalities.


Why is difference between the personalities of reader and character important?


Well, their are at least two reasons:


1. Reading about yourself really isn´t all that exciting
2. We all tend to be protective of our self understanding


The first one is obvious: if your reader wanted to read about himself, he wouldn´t bother reading something you wrote. He would look up his diary or check out his timeline on Facebook... The key word here is "Booooring!"


We want to be able to connect with the people in the book, but they also must be interesting to us. Interesting people are not like ourselves. And obviously we are walking the fine line of too much/ too little here...


The second reason is more suttle and often, when we read, we don´t think about it. But if you were to read about a person, who seems to be very much like yourself and that person suddenly was in a situation, where he decided to do something immoral or criminal, your subconciousness would register a head on attack on your own person. We don´t like that, do we? It´s okay to be challenged, but not too much. In smaller bits, please...


What do you think?
I´ve now presented you with these basics and they might be helpful to you as you endeavour into writing your next masterpiece! However, these passages may also have the opposite effect, so:

Where do you think the right balance between difference and likeness with the characters is?

Do you always remember to focus on the balance between show and tell?

Is this post helpful at all?

Read, comment, link as you please...

Embarrassing Moments ready on smashwords.com!

As promised, I can now announce that my translation of "Embarrassing Moments" is ready for sale at Smashwords.com - and it is even ON SALE as I write this, so hurry getting your copy, before the price goes up to normal on Monday!


You can get it by clicking on this picture:

Till Sunday the price is 50% - $1.49


Beneath an excerpt from the collection for your enjoyment ->

Birds and bees

For the third time I was a father. A lovely daughter was now at the hospital with my wonderfull wife. Every child birth is an amazing experience and as a father, I´ve always recognized my responsibility to teach my children about everything there is to life, even some of the more… well… should we say the more intimite issues. That one conversation about the birds and the bees has never been one I feared, but I´d have to admit, I didn´t think it would be so soon coming.

We were on our way to greet the new baby. On the back seat were my 4 year old son and his little sister, aged 2. They had both been at my in-laws for the duration of the birth and even though they may not have understood everything about pregnancy and giving birth, I am sure they had the notion that something out of the ordinary was taking place. And so the car was steaming with joy and excitement.

Suddenly the cosy nature of our being together in the car was broken by my son, who had most likely been speculation a lot on our way to the hospital.

"Daddy? Where did little sister get out?"

Complete and utter silence filled the car...

"Ehm," I said a little embarrassed, pausing for as long as I could in the hope that he would quickly forget about it again. He didn´t...

"Daddy?" he asked again, "I´m asking you something..."

"Yeah, yeah, I know. I heard you…” My brain was exploding with over time. How on earth could I squeeze my out of that one? "I, ehm, I really have to, ehm, I really have to keep my focus on the road and the cars on it, so…"

There were quite a bit of traffic, so for now he accepted the feeble excuse without much further ado. Still, I had a feeling that I wouldn´t be able to postpone the issue much further.

I was right, because shortly after he was there with his question again… "There aren o cars now, daddy… where did my little sister come out?"

"Well… ehm, yeah, ehm… she, ehm, wel.. she came out the usual way, you know..."

I knew very well it wouldn´t do, men somehow I thought to myself that a boy his age really didn´t need all those details...

"Yeah, but where?"

"Well, you know, it´s ehm," I tried to pull time as best I could, "She, ehm, she came out… ehm, underneath, you know..."

"Yeah, but where?"

I was sweating like a pig and the seat was more and more gluing firmly to my shirt and skin, as I was fighting for my life trying to figure out how to get out of this predicament. I mean, what ARE you going to tell a kid only 4 years old about sex and birth and all of that?

I was fighting like crazy to come up with something that could draw out time, so that he would forget about it and think about other things. Things more appropriate for a kid his age, like playing with Lego and that sort of stuff,but there were no help what so ever. Not inside the car, not outside of it. If only I had bought him a teddy bear or a book or something, anything to keep him occupied, but nooo, I had to save money everywhere I could.

I really felt like an idiot. That´s when I saw it, coming to the rescue. It towered up like a protecting castle among all other buildings og behind the hedges you could just see a glimpse og the parking lot. Phew, saved by the bell - well, the building, anyway.

"Right, kids, that´s the hospital," I sighed with relief, "all we need to do now is to find a parking space and then..."

"Then you can tell me!" the boy lit up and interrupted me.

Darn! Once again the light son the first floor in my head were flickering. I can´t believe, how stubborn that boy is! That´s gotta be something he got from his mother´s side of the family. It was more than difficult concentrating on the simple task of getting the car placed in some sort of order within the two white lines. I was glad Linette wasn´t here to witness my struggle with it. She would´ve lavhed her rear end off og and I wouldn´t have heard the end of it. After all I usually tease her about not being able to park the car in the streets.

"Yeah, yeah, take it easy, boy. First we have to figure out the way to where your mum and sister are,” I said with the ferris wheel in my head spinning like crazy.

On the way to the elevator I did what I could to bring to the children´s attention all the magnificents you can experience at a hospital. That is, after all, an important responsibility being a father, that you teach your children about the world? Wheel chairs lined up like taxis in an airport waiting for a new ride, doctors and nurses in white and of course the most amazing and exciting magazine stand you´ve ever seen. But for some strange reason none of it really made any difference. No matter what I did to make concrete pillars, nurse bagdes and flower pots seem like the most interesting things in the world, the boys answer was coming to me like a parrot in a shop. "Yes, dad, but where did my sister come out?"

We found the elevator and I allowed him to push the button. At leas the would have that to keep him busy, even if it was only for a short while. An elderly lady stepped in there with us and pushed for the thirteenth floor. Our destination was the sixteenth. She nodded her head friendly towards the children and me.

"What lovely children you have,” she smiled as the elevator started moving. If she only knew the hell, that kid had been pulling me through, I thought to myself, men of course I didn´t say anything.

"Are they your own?" she suddenly asked, "Well, I probably shouldn´t ask, but these days parents are getting older and older, so when you see such a fine young man with two children, you really never know, do you?"

I suppose she was right. It was a bit unusual having two, no three children at the age of 26 and 28.

"Yes, they are mine. We are on our way to say hello to our new little sister," I responded and hoped in the bottom of my heart, that the pending question of the boy could at least wait till we left the elevator and the lady behind us.

But alas, I was terribly mistaken.

"Dad! " He was almost jumping up and down like a mad man. "Please answer, I want to know!"

I did nothing and decided to pretend I didn´t hear it. One thing was answering such an embarrassing question but answering it in front of strangers was a completely different matter.

As it turned out, it was a bad choice, because now the lady looked at me with an even bigger smile than before.

"So, we are a little impatient, are we? " she said, "Well, I can certainly understand that. It´s not every day you get to greet a new citizen in this world."

I was just about to give her some indifferent, but polite answer, but the boy was much quicker.

"NO! " he yelled, "I want to know now, dad!"

At first, the lady was taken by surprice at this outburst, but then, for reason above my comprehension, she decided to lend me a helping hand. Bending slightly forward towards the boy; as much as she could without falling with cane and handbag and all; she saw him directly in the eyes and asked the one question that would open the gate to everlasting pain and embarrassment.

"Well, my little friend," she said, "What is it you want to know?"

Oh, no! I quietly dreamed my way to the bottom of a wooden box with the lid firmly fastened by nails and with a sign on it saying: ”Caution, live animals” and another sign stating an address in Timbuktu. Instead, I had to wake up right there at the front gate of hell to a question demanding an answer here and now, before things got even more out of hand.

"Alright! Alright!” I almost shouted, ”She got out of mums vagina, then! Are you satisfied now?”

It seemed as if time came to a complete halt and the only sound you could hear was the lady´s mouth morphing from a big open smile to the most sour chicken rump mouth I have ever witnessed.

The girl in my other hand suddenly woke up at the sound of a word she recognized. She let go of my hand, pulled up in her skirt and down went her diper and stockings all the way to her anckles.

"gina," she said while pointing to her ”you-now-what” absolutely thrilled by recognition and smiling at the lady as if she had just won the world championship in some popular sport.

Too much for the elderly lady she decided that she wasn´t getting of at the thirteenth floor anyway. Instead, she jumped off as the elevator stopped at the eleventh floor and the doors opened. With a surpricing agility she squeezed herself in between two mentally handicapped men, who were cheering my daughter on clapping their hands and shouting ”hurray” apparently thinking she was very clever.

I kidnly asked them if they could wait for the next elevator and luckily they accepted with a smile and a ”have a nice day.” As sson as the doors closed, I pulled up stockings and dipers and downed the skirt.

During all of this my son hadn´t said anything, but even though I didn´t see his face, I was struck by a hurricane of his thoughts ramming into my brain stem about how hopeless his father was. And then it came. Like a fist in my guts almost taking away my breath.

"I know dad!” he said, ”But where? Was it at home or here at the hospital???"

Where do socks disappear to when they vanish?

Where do sock disappear to?

If you ever wondered where socks disappear to, when they suddenly vanish from your laundry, help is on the way:

This is what happens: Inside your washing machine there is a portal transporting your socks to Sock Island, where they have a well deserved vacation after weeks and weeks of staying in a dark drawer, being walked inside of smelly and air tight shoes and boots and being washed round and round and round till they get dizzy and want to puke.

In Sebastian on Sock Island we meet the boy Sebastian who gets sucked through this portal and lands on Sock Island, where he has a marvellous time with the two socks, Sokkey and Stockey. But something is terribly wrong on Sock Island. The nasty Woolley is out for power and wants Sock Island to be his personal kingdom. He has stolen the key to the portal and Sebastian can´t get home to his family, before he has found the key through many dangerous adventures.

The story is still under way and we expect it to be published in Danish this fall and then it should be translated and adapted into English spring 2013.

Looking forward to publish, it would be magnificent to hear your comments on the idea...


Per Holbo, Author of "Princess Lila and the Knight in Shouting Armor," available on amazon at: http://www.amazon.com/Princess-Knight-Shouting-Armor-ebook/dp/B006WIHI5Y/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1327839157&sr=8-3

The Fish Model: Element (a) Starters!

The first element of the fish model
As promised, I will go through the fish model in making a good reading experience for your readers and today I will guide you through the first element: The Starter!

But first I need to clear something up
As these posts are a work in progress I will from time to time have to revise some of my definitions and explanations as needed. In my first post I claimed that the starter is the first 2-3 words in your work, but as I was writing the present post I realized that this definition is a bit off. The starter CAN be broader than those first words. It can be the title of your work, the first few sentences or even the image on the cover.

Let us begin
The Starter is, beside the obvious that it´s what starts your work, a teaser. It´s something you use to get the readers attention. In a commercial, the first few miliseconds are vital to getting out the message. To get an idea, think of a commercial you remember. How did it begin? What was it that got your attention? Was it the clothes the people in the commercial wore? Was it some text on the screen? Sounds maybe? Whatever it was, the thing that made you want to see more was an example of a good starter.

Three starter tactics
There are many ways to make a good starter and though it is impossible to set a complete guideline to cover every possible effective starter, there are a few tactics you can use to make a good starter.


The surprise tactic is when you - yes, you guessed it - surprise your readers, catch them off guard to open up their minds as to what comes next. The surprise tactic has it´s strength in being unique, ´cause otherwise it really wouldn´t be a surprise, would it? If someone else has already used what you may think is a good surprise tactic starter, then you may want to rethink it.


Examples
In my first English fairy tale I use this tactic in the title of the book: "Princess Lila and The Knight in Shouting Armor." It´s simple and effective, because you would expect a Knight in SHINING armor and instead you get a Knight in SHOUTING Armor. The reader´s interest is already on heels and I can begin to tell the story.


In fact, when I published this book on Smashwords.com the number of sample downloads sent it straight to the top of my own book list passing books on it´s way that had been there for several weeks and I must admit, that the cover I had at the time was the worst cover I´ve ever had on any book!


Another example where the title is the starter is a Danish novel published fall 2011. It had the quite extensive title: "The 100-year-old, who climbed out the window and disappeared." This title makes you wonder, because it seems to be self-contradicting. Just to imagine someone that old climbing out the window is strange and we want to know more.


Yet another example is chapter 2 in my upcoming novel, "Hickory Street Changing," where the beginning says "Couple´s Therapy? How can cheating on your wife be Couple´s Therapy?" Indeed! How can it? I want to read more to find out and thus it´s a good starter.


The sounds tactic is a tactic rarely used, but when applied it can make a world of difference. Using a sound in the beginning of your work instead of words brings your story to a high paste level even before your reader has any clue as to what the story is all about.


Example
I´ve used this tactic in some of my Flash Fiction and this is an area where it is most called for, because Flash Fiction being so short, you really need something to get things going right away. A sound will do that. I wrote a flash fiction a few months ago (in Danish, so I´m sorry, but you can´t read it) where the beginning is a car crash. It started with "Crriiiisjang!" being the sound of a car crashing.


The quoting tactic is a peculiar one to describe, but as you have already guessed this tactic is when you start with a quote. The quote can be one of your characters saying something interesting or it could be a quote from a paper, a book or a magazine, those being either from the real world or from the world of your story. This tactic is one of my favorites, but since it is usually harder to do well than the other tactics mentioned here, I try to not use so often.


This tactic is widely used in Science Fiction and Fantasy. The reason is probably because in these two genres you need more description of the story´s world than in most other stories. So, why not do two things at the same time: peek the readers interest with a good starter AND at the same time explain a bit of the story world?


Examples
An example could be Isaac Asimov´s trilogy "Foundation" It starts of with a quote from the galactic encyclopedia presenting one of the main characters, Hari Seldon and at the same time presenting a bit of the story world. This example is even better than most, because in addition Asimov uses this quote to presetn another main character, Gaal Dornick AND it leads us into the story by letting the encyclopedia tell of a meeting between these two people which then is the beginning of the story itself. Brilliant use of the quoting tactic!


The Peculiarity tactic is the last one I will present at this point. There will of course be dosen´s of other tactics, but not on this blog and certainly not today.


This tactic is quite simple to explain, but hard to master. The tactic is to use words in such a way, that it makes the reader puzzled enough to read on but, and this is the hard part, not so puzzled that your work is tossed and replaced!


How to do this is a matter of training and getting someone to read your peculiar start. Did I say "someone?" What I meant was as many different people on your target group as you can possibly gather! The challenge with this tactic is that you can never know how people will react to your starter. You never know when it´s going to keep them reading and when it´s a tosser starter, so the only way to get an idea is to let numerous people read it and give you some feed back.


Warning!
My advise: stay away from this starter, unless you have the base for experimenting with it. If you fail with this starter you may even throw off potential costumers from ever reading another book of yours!


Final statement
Now, that´s it for today. I will get back to the other elements of a good reading experience as soon as I can, hopefully next week, though I cannot make any promises.


Was the above helpful? Do you agree with what I just said? Do you have any revising statements?

Defining a good reading experience

"A book should never contain more than 100.000 words!"

Recently an English Professor hit a fellow author, L.E.Fitzpatrick, with this review. Though it wasn´t any of my own work beeing careened and hung to dry it still made my blood boil. Who is anyone to state such obvious nonsense about creative businesses such as writing books or music, painting or sculpturing?

That´s why I decided to write this post on my blog trying to define a good read.

Authoring is hard work!
To give your readers a good reading experience is hard work. You have to make an effort, so that your reader finds it worth the trouble to turn the page and read on. This truth has made some people think it´s like rocket science. Well, let me tell you: it´s not! Still, a lot can be done to give readers alike a better reading experience, ´cause let´s face it: we need higher standards when it comes to books - especially since recent years developments in the area of ebook publishing has made it possible for any bum visiting a public library to publish inaddequite scribblings - and believe me, they do! Just open your favorite ereader and download the first 5 free ebooks by Indie Authors. Chances are you will know exactly what I mean as soon as you´ve read the first three of them. And now that we´re at it: there´s a reason why so many Indie ebooks are free!

We need rules - to be broken
So, basically, we need rules, but we also need to understand that rules in creative fields are meant to be broken, if it´s called for.

My music teacher in college used to put it somewhat like this:

"The rules are there to help you improve. By applying the rules, you stand on the shoulders of those who came before you learning from their experience. But the rules are not there to deprive you of creativeness. If the music works, it´s good music, end of story. However, if you choose to not apply the rules, the music better be good or I´ll slap you in the face with bad grades!"

Defining a good reading experience
Let´s begin by defining a good reading experience by stating this simple fact:
If your target reader in general likes your work and turns the pages with little difficulty, you have given them a good reading experience.

But how do you do that?

Here is a few basic tips:

1. Shape your book like a fish (my apologies for the poor quality of this drawing - I am, after all, an Author, not an illustrator:)

By shaping your story like a fish you have the basic model of a good story. The elements in my model are:

a. Starters! The first two or three words are perhaps the most important part of your readers experience. This beginning determines if your reader starts reading with excitement or confusement. Make them count!

b. Introducing the basics is one of the most hidden secrets to writing. When you read a book you like, you probably won´t notice the effort the author has put into giving you these basics. But if they are not there, you will! And you probably won´t even get to the bottom of the first page before giving up.

c. The beginning. If you are just as impatient an author as I am, beginning to tell the story is the part you hate the most. This is the part where you give your readers back ground info to enable them to understand the rest of the story, so if you don´t get it right, they won´t read the rest of the story and you will have a hard time convincing them to buy your newest book, if the first part of a previous book was not worth the while.

d. Main body of the story the part you, as an author would most likely find to be the easy part, because this is where your idea comes to life. Still, you need to work hard to tell the story right, but I´ll get into that in another post.

e. Concluding the story can be an exciting endeavour, but to be honest, it can also be a drag. But again, if you can´t conclude the story, your readers will feel cheated. Depraving your readers of the conclusion is like waving candy at the eyes of a child only to put in back in your pocket. Even if your book is brilliant up to this point, a bad conclusion can ruin the entire reading experience for your readers and they´ll never come back.

d. Tying up loose ends means answering unanswered questions. In any story there will be questions that are never answered, but still you need to at least address these questions. The interesting thing is this: if your readers loved your book up to his point all you have to do is address unanswered questions with something like:

"How Mrs. Landry ever got the information never came to the surface, but it was on her account that the firm upgraded their security."

With this you haven´t answered the question, but you still addressed it and your readers will accept it.

e. Making room for more is not really a necessity, but it is often what separates a good book from a very good book. The reason is simple: nothing in every day life really ends and by making room for more you make the story credible.

Making room for more posts
In the coming week I´ll be diving deeper into the above mentioned, but for now I´ll just ask you this one question: do you apply all of these elements in your story and in which ways?

Platform Wars! - helpful or destructive?

Apple Hypin´ Announcement!
Apple has announced that they will have an announcement by the end of the month. Not very surprising in itself. Apple has had much success using this form of advertising in the past to create speculation and rumurs and thus hyping the effect of their announcements when they actually announce their announcements... Confused? Don´t be!

Just understand it like this: Apple will tell us something that may or may not be of interest, but to be sure we are listening, they tell us that they are about to tell us something so that we will keep a close eye on them and be open minded when they finally come around to telling us what they want to tell us.

Ehm... I can see that didn´t help much... Well, let´s just say that Apple wants to tell us something by the end of this month...

What are they planning?
According to Good Ereader Apple is about to launch a self-publishing platform for ebook authors making it easier to publish your ebook through iBook.

So far, so good...

Amazon has had such a platform (DTP) for some time now and this will be Apple´s response.

Is it a good development?
I suppose that for Apple, Amazon and some of the other retailers in ebooks this is a natural course of action and though I agree that competition between companies is usually good for the consumer and for the international economy one thing pokes me right in the eye: they all have a catch! You have to give up your right to publish elsewhere!

See, when you are an indie author you are by definition concerned about your freedom to write, publish and earn your way as you see fit. Some may think this is a sort of arrogance towards the publishing industry, but understand that the publishing industry has flushed out the very ground base of it´s right to exist: Author Servicing!

In the old days, when you planned to publish a book you would send your manuscript to a publisher who would read it through and decide weither it was worth their effort to go further with it. If they found your manuscript worthy of publishing they would help you edit it, proof read it, create a cover for it, print it, advertise it and distribute it. All in some variation of cooperation.

Today, when you want to publish, the first step of getting a publisher to move on with your manuscript is still the same, but as soon as you get approved for publishing, you´re on your own! You edit it yourself, you proof read it yourself or ask a friend to help you with it, you get someone to create a cover for you (if you´re really lucky the publisher may do this for a certain fee) and if you want people to know about your book the entire marketing departement sits about 15 inches behind your laptop.

Considering all of this, the only advantage you have as an author publishing through the big dogs is the distribution process. No wonder more and more authors decide to become independent!

In comes Smashwords.com in 2008 making it both easier and more effective to publish your work and the market changed. Now you can publish via Smashwords who will proof read your book before shipping it to other retailers among which are Barnes and Nobles, Kobo and.... well, whaddayounow: Amazon Kindle and Apple iBooks!

Amazon´s DTP requires you to publish exclusively through Amazon and Apple´s new publishing platform? Surprise, surprise..... Exclusive Publishing!

Thank you, but no thank you!
Sorry guys, but I simply fail to see any reason whatsoever why I should renounce my freedom as an Indie Author to publish through those platforms as long as I can keep my freedom using Smashwords.com

Smashwords does have a rule that resembles exclusiveness: you are not allowed to use the ebook formats created with Smashwords´ Meatgrinder automated tech. - but that seems only fair, since they are the ones providing that option. But you fellas at Apple and Amazon demands me to renounce my rights to my own work and that´s a whole different story!

The platform wars
This platform war is about to be derailed and from history we can learn that in the end only one platform survives - and in many cases the winning platform isn´t even the best.

Mainly two examples come to mind: the qwerty vs. Dvorak Keyboard Layouts and the VHS vs. BetaMax videotape war!

The qwerty keyboard was patented for type writers by Christopher Sholes in 1868 and the first to use it was Remington in 1873. At the time it made good sense, since it combined effective type writing with as little jamming of the keys as possible, but when the electric typewriter was invented in the 1930´s the jamming problem disappeared. Then Dvorak invented the Dvorak Keyboard Layout based on studies of physiologi and typing speed. It never was any real success because the cost of replacing a well proven type writer layout with a new one was just too risky.

The war between BetaMax and VHS was won by VHS even though almost every expert claimed the latter to be of poorer quality. The main reason was that the porn industry decided to use VHS.... food for thought in itself...

What´s the best ebook platform?
Honestly: I don´t know! But what I do know is that if I was asked to point out the one thing most important to an author, my answer would be simple:

The freedom to write and get read!

I believe I am not the only Author with this as my highest priority, but don´t take my word for it... Instead, comment on it, if you´re an author yourself and tell the world:

Your turn!
For you as an Author, what is the most important thing when it comes to publishing?