Originally published on my ko-fi page as subscriber-only post on August 27
I was talking to a fellow author, Tessa Hastjartanto today, when it struck me. Children is the question; Land is the answer.
My cPTSD therapy has ended three weeks ago. Since then, I have been doing things that have been nowhere near my reach (“comfort zone” LOLOLOL) for, often, six years. Today, for instance, I went out to lunch with Tessa, unaccompanied, at an actual cafe, and it was our first ever 3D meeting. So, technically she also counted as semi-stranger. If you look at me, you probably don’t see someone who hasn’t been able to enter a supermarket for five years.
Children has been my subconscious writing down, in great detail, the memories I have repressed. (You don’t know when you repress your memories, thought I’d mention that. Repressed memories are repressed.) I used to laugh when people told me it was so dark, because I was aware it was very autobiographical. Land is less dark, or rather less often/continuously dark, but I also have all those memories back. Which is why Children took me 29 almost complete rewrites, and Land is on draft 14 – if you exclude the drafts written 4/3/2 years ago when my brain suddenly had a word vomit, it’s actually on its sixth. And as my editor told me, the differences between 5th and 6th (green vs red on the graph) are mostly words or phrases. [In the meantime, the book has been finished and sent to the proofreader – BL]
What is it about?
Me, sort of. But I know that’s not the real question, although it is the real answer. Land is a grimdark Norse mythology retelling of the discovery of Iceland. I know ‘Norse mythology’ and ‘retelling of actual historical events’ don’t go together for many people. Welp, they do here.
I have written a take on Hrafna-Flóki’s journey, only Flóki’s role (literally) is played by Magni, and instead of three ravens – who has this many shoulders? – he takes… one of Odin’s ravens, who flies away from the ship three times and returns twice. The names of the characters, apart from Freya and Maya, come from history, too. (I shortened ‘Þjóðgerður’ to Gerdur.) So do certain events, foreshadowed in Children. So, if you read the Wikipedia entry on Hrafna-Flóki, you will get spoilers for the book. Yes, this person has to drown. And yes, that person MUST go back, even though it makes zero sense when you read the Landnámabók.
But what is it ABOUT?
The tagline gives it away. Love. Land. Loss. Happy Never After.
It’s about love in its many shapes and forms. Freya only understands the romantic love, the sort that makes you think the other person’s farts are perfume. Maya understands all sorts except this one. Magni and Thorolf’s arc is an anti-romance, starting with a Happy One Night – can two people bound by a vicious love spell by someone who purposefully picked a couple that couldn’t be less suitable for each other if they tried make it?
*glances at tagline*
Who knows, who knows.
It’s about land. Ice-land. Iceland. But also very simply about needing land – to farm, to dwell on, to survive. About what that land (have you seen the recent volcano news from Iceland) can do to you. Does a land have morals? Thoughts? Even in the world where Gods walk the Earth, except for the one who conveniently is located both everywhere and nowhere as Freya demands to speak with him, where magic is a thing the same way plumbing is a thing, does the world take revenge or plead or demand or desire? Or is it what people do ‘for’ the land, like they do it ‘for’ the god named God or Odin?
As for loss, the original tagline was ‘Love or Land: Choose Wisely’ but the title sort of skewed the riddle. Which would you choose? Which will they choose? Who will be choosing?
Children is the question – Land is the answer
In Children the characters do the usual fantasy coming-of-age thing. By now, they have come of age, sort of. What next? That’s exactly what they have to decide.
Now that I have my memories back, they arrived with lots of questions. I came of my own age (at 46) and it’s time to answer those questions that have stuck with me, or got me stuck, since I was five, six, thirteen, thirty-one… Land brings its characters, and me, a lot of closures. Children and Land are actually a complete duology, the third book, The Blue King will be more of a companion book than a third in a trilogy. It will also be only somewhat autobiographical for reasons that will be obvious when you read Land and I tell you The Blue King will be Thorolf’s book.