Bjørn Larssen's Blog, page 2

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Breaking the Silence

I’ve spent all of 2023 writing, even if I only published one story, ‘Here, Let Me Give You a Hand’ in the Anatomy of Fear anthology. I have even sent the sequel to Children to Megan Thee Editor, before realising while drafting book three that I had a major character all wrong, and I need to rewrite the whole thing. I drafted the follow-up to Storytellers and I’m working on the follow-up for Why Odin Drinks. Most of the year, though, has been spent writing this post. (This is draft 18.)

Last autu...

Guest Post: When Life Gives You Lemons, Make Some Lemon-Ale with Thor!

Guest post by Rowdy Geirsson about things that keep happening to me ALL. THE. TIME.

 

Sometimes life just sucks. This is especially true in the 2020s. The lemons of life are everywhere this decade. It’s basically raining lemons. Hell, you can’t even turn on the news or play with your godless smart phone without encountering a serious societal lemon of some sort. And that doesn’t even touch on the matter of the depressing preponderance of actual personal life lemons on top of everything. All of w...

Why Bjørn Doesn’t Write to Deadlines

This post originally appeared on my ko-fi blog, available for my supporters – thank you!

After I finished Storytellers, I started working on a disastrous book called The Age of Fire. Luckily I realised in time that not everything I wrote was genius just because it came from my brilliant mind, and shelved the thing. It featured a woman called Maya, though. Maya dressed only in black, had messy, mid-length hair, and liked silver bracelets.

When I started on Children, it had a different title, and ...

Children: 27 months later

This post has originally been posted on my ko-fi blog, available for my supporters – thank you!

I’ve been just about to start working on Land – the sequel to Children – very soon for, um, *nervously glances at the April 2020 date on the file sent to beta readers* …a while. In the meantime, things happened. Not just that one thing, but 16 months of intensive c-PTSD therapy. Followed by the discovery that my subconscious has actually kept the best for last.

(This is not a “pity me” post, just sayi...

Stable Diffusion: AI puts “artificial” in “art”

Once upon a time, there was a profession that thrived. Highly valued professionals provided essential services that nobody else could, and charged for them accordingly. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, something new appeared, and things changed. People who devoted many years to perfecting their craft found themselves limited to few, mostly mundane things. The value of their work plummeted. So did their numbers. Nowadays, you can only do it if you either branch out and have other sources of income...

My top 5 books of 2022

According to Goodreads, I have read 126 books this year. Some of them were old friends; a few I read more than once, and will again, adding to the suffering of my ever-growing TBR pile.

I have already announced my top 5 of the year twice and changed my mind 29 times. I’m going to write it down and publish, so I am no longer allowed to keep tweaking. Especially as all of those five (ahem) (you’ll see why “ahem” in a jiffy) books are absolute gems – each of the books in my top three belongs at #1 ...

Where is Land?

The sequel to Children is called Land. The book explains why the series is called The Ten Worlds, since our heroines and heroes travel from the Nine Worlds Universe to Iceland (where else?) and some of the survivors make it back. It’s going to be cinematic. Epic, actually. There’s everlasting love, but no romance; exploration of consent and abuse in uneven relationships; there’s Iceland and the Hidden Folk. Questions asked in Children are answered, riddles solved. Aha, Land also doesn’t exist, e...

#poormythology: Creation

I’ve had a few people tell me they see me as an expert on everything Norse. A few others remarked they’d probably get more out of Why Odin Drinks if they knew more about the “real” mythology. Eeep! Don’t try this at home! Do you know how much stuff I totally destroyed to make up my own stuff?! You don’t, so I’ll tell you. Buckle up.

 

Origins

It took over 200 years from Iceland’s christianisation before Snorri Sturluson got to writing Poetic Edda and Prose Edda. Have you ever played the telephon...

Be Aware! Autism!

April is Autism Awareness Month.

 

Remember to be unaware of autism between 1 May and 31 March!

 

Some activists are trying to change the narrative to “autism acceptance month.” I can’t say I disagree, because yes, I am “aware” of autism. I am also aware of rabid dogs, my allergy to orange peel, and of the slugs in our garden. I’d argue, however, that “autism,” as in the word itself, is already widely accepted. Autistic people, not so much.

Among many other fun things, about which I’ll write so...