Nils Ödlund's Blog, page 3

The Dullest Journey – Part 2

You can find the first part of the series here.

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Toini pulled on her boots and laced them up. Black leather, ten holes, reinforced toe caps. On board the ship she didn’t really need them, but it was a matter of habit and comfort. She’d worn these boots for years – probably close to a decade, she’d forgotten – and she wasn’t going to stop just because she was in the comfort of her own home.

They were a part of her.

Well, almost. Taking them off after a long day was kind of nice too, but that...

Introduction – Silver Skin

It’s Friday once again, and time for another Lost Dogs introduction. This is the first time in the series that the introduction does not describe the location where the story takes place, but rather some other aspect of the world. In this case it’s about International Rail, the company that runs pretty much all of the train traffic within the civilized world.

Here goes:

International Rail. The fifth super power. The hand that moves the pieces across the board.

A network of railroads spanning t...

The Dullest Journey?

When someone asks for advice on how to develop a character for their story, I often tell them to write slice-of-life flash-fiction about the character. The idea is that by spending time with the character while they do mundane or everyday things, we get to know them a little better.

I’ve done this in the past, but I don’t feel like I did it enough when I started writing the Lost Dogs series, and I wish I had. It’s also been over two years now that I’ve been working on Lost Dogs, and I haven’...

Introduction – Lost Naked Furious

It’s Friday again, already. The week went by quicker than it felt like, and it’s time to share another Introduction chapter. This time it’s for Lost Dogs #4: Lost Naked Furious, which is probably my favorite book in the series – so far.

Here goes:

Flougmyrr. A large but insignificant corporate state somewhere in the endless swamplands of the mid south. Hundreds of miles of nothing but jungle and standing water. Here and there a lake. Once in a while an island.

Abundant greenery. Trees as tall...

Introduction – A Freak Among Freaks

Looks like it’s Friday again already. That means it’s time to share the Introduction chapter for the third book in the Lost Dogs series, A Freak Among Freaks. Like for the first and second book, this piece describes the location where the book takes place.

The mid south. An endless mess of jungle and swampland forest. Stinking bogs and poison brambles. Screaming birds and buzzing flies. Sweltering heat, air too humid to breathe, and when a breeze finally comes along, it reeks of death and dec...

Introduction – Undeserved Second Chance

It’s Friday again, which means it’s time for another Lost Dogs Introduction. This time it’s for the second book in the series, Undeserved Second Chance:

Sun Gan Dun Mansion.

Sunrise.

A lush mountainside. Sheets of mist rising from the valley. Sunlight just barely touching the tip of the peak. A sheer cliff overlooking the lake, and at the top of the cliff a grand old mansion and its gardens.

Gleaming marble and well kept lawns. Straight gravel paths and a pond full of luminous gold fish....

Introduction – Last Fight of the Old Hound

To celebrate the release of Lost Dogs #8: North Into the Past, I’m starting off series of blog posts where I share the Introduction “chapter” of each book. Each introduction is a short piece intended to set the mood and scene for the book, and they’re usually only a few hundred words – about a page or two.

In the first few books, the Introduction was mainly a description of where the story takes place, but in later books, they’ve started to include information about the world. For example, bo...

New book, and more frequent updates

Tomorrow is the release day of my new book, Lost Dogs #8: North Into the Past. This one follows Roy, as he and Alene make their way north through the Midlands Union.

To celebrate this, I made the first book in the series available for free, last weekend, and I tried to talk it up a bit on social media. It worked pretty well, and I got a lot of good response from it. Also, the book managed to reach the number 1 spot for English-language books in two of its categories on the German version of A...

Even More New Covers

If you’ve followed me a while, either here or on social media, you might have noticed that I’ve been messing around with my covers quite a bit. I’ve had at least five different ones for the first book in the series, and most of the other books have also had multiple different versions.

A while back, at around the time I released the paperback version of A Break in the Clouds, I found a new style to use for my covers. Since then, I have slowly updated the covers of the other books to match tha...

New Covers – Again

Once more, I’ve begun to rework the covers for my books.

So far, only the first one in the series has received the overhaul, but the plan is to do the others as well. Most likely, I’ll do one book per week, so as to rest my arm/shoulder in between. I don’t want to risk tearing up my old muscle injuries again, so it’s better to take it slow.

The new cover for Last Fight of the Old Hound looks like this, and I’ve included the new blurb as well:

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You always hurt the ones you love.

Sixteen years...