9 August

After years on the Tiktok app, I tried a different approach. I am seeing result. I finally I have fantasy readers who are excited to hear about the books.

Here is the update of the fourth book;

My proofreader is working his way through the book and doing a great job. I hope to get the fourth book out before the end of the year. I still have a few things to do before that happens.

Today here in Norway it is a beautiful summer day. This summer has been perfect. Not to hot, not too cold. Just perfect. And that is the way it is up here in Northern Norway. It's either really bad weather, or perfect. There is no inbetween here.

Summer is my relax time for me, I try to enjoy the light summer nights and take in as much sun as I can. Winter will be here soon with total darkness. Winter is my writing time, I sit inside with a hot cup of coffee or tea and write. Not much else is happening. I am just giving my proofreader more chapters when ever he catches up with me. That is it. Sun, nature and light. Enjoy your summer. 

2 August

Yesterday I was contacted by a reader that had listened to the audiobook of The Crown Prince on Audible and loved it. I don't know if readers know how much it means to an author to hear that someone enjoys the hard work it takes to make and produce a book. Much appriciated. It really made my day and it gave me a push to get back to writing.

When you are a self published author you have to do it all yourself. Write, edit, rewrite, translate, get editors, beta readers, proof readers. You are in charge of finding a cover designer and buy a cover. Then publish the books to all the different platforms.

Audiobooks are another thing you have to do. It costs a lot to make an audiobook. I am hoping to get enough sales to make the whole series into audiobooks. Marketing is another hat that an indie author have to wear.

It can't cost a lot, because everything costs money: Editors, proof readers, narrators, cover designers. It is fun to learn and I really want it to be as good as it can be for my readers. 

19 July

I nominated The Crown Prince for "Prime reading."

It is ebooks for Amazon Prime members to read for free. I hop I get it. That would mean a much bigger exposure and helping new readers find the books in this wonderful series.

If it gets "nominated"., (I guess they rotate the books on there) and I don't know why it wouldn't be. Tell me what you think about prime reading if you have experience with it as an author or reader.

16 July

The fourth book is going well, my proofreader is working his way through my spelling and language. It will be nice to get it published and focus on the next and last book in the series. Or so I think. At least for this story. I might write other stories in the same universe. I have not decided yet. It is so much work writing a book but fun at the same time. I usually write when I am inspired, I never force myself to write. I have been focused on marketing since the algoritm on the clock app doesn't show the videos to readers. Sure, you can get followers, but are they the right followers? If you are not getting readers as an author then how is that going to help you with exposure? It obviously won't. It's a waste of time. You can pay for marketing but that gets expensive quick and not all people can afford to spend large amounts on adverticement. 

12 July

The Crown Prince is on Audible, Spotify, Storytel AND on Kindle Unlimited. I am hoping it will give me more exposure. I have also applied to get it out as a memberbenefit book on Audible. So keep your fingers crossed I get it. 

I baked a gluten-free and Vegan, bread made from mung-daal. It's so good. Some people bake with red lentils but I think it's a preference thing. I also always fill upp my kitchen with food over the summer. I am done for this year. It's a great way to save money. 

Every summer I slack off a bit, take some time off and do other things. 

I am still looking for my tribe on Tik Tok, I find more and more fantasy lovers that are looking for an immersive FMC High Fantasy book to read. I am thinking more and more of getting the audiobooks done too. 

6 July

I added The Crown Prince to Kindle Unlimited, KU!

Readers can now read the first book in The Kongahälla Legend book series on KU. The algoritm on TikTok is worse than bad. The only way to reach readers is throug direct message. It is a lot of work, but we all need to find new readers som how. It is going really well. I have had an overwhelmingly positive response and I hope this will lead to a lot of new readers finding the series. A question I see repeated over and over on TikTok is ;What the heck is going on with TikTok's algoritm? It is so bad. If you know or know what to do about it. 

4 July

Yesterday I made a new book trailer for The Crown Prince. It's the first book in the Kongahälla Legend book series. I usually try to find video or pictures that can represent the story as I see it. Maybe provoke some interest in the books. I find that I have to be in the right state of mind when I make the video. Or else it doesn't work. It is not easy and takes sometimes all day for me. When the pictures are picked and put in the right order on Canva. I finish it in TikToks video fixer program. There I usually delete some pictures and then look for the right music. That is usually another couple of hours or work. When you finally get the music and pictures to match then it is ready to go. Yesterday when I posted it I saw that it was only shown to ten people...

That really doesn't make it worth the time you spend making them. To get around this I hunt for fantasy readers looking for recs and interact with them so that they will go to my page. I feel like this is the algoritms job, not mine. How do you feel about this? 

29 June

Last year I stopped using Meta and I don't use X (twitter).

As a small indie author I try to reach my audience. It is not easy. I also use TikTok. I noticed that views on videos are as low as in the fourties. So I decided that it was no longer any point in using Tik Tok either.

Because of this I now only repost old posts and once a week I do a new post if that. I now use TikTok more as a place to keep posts, incase a reader happens to stumble on my content. The algorithm is just getting worse and worse. I looked if I could adjust something to make it better. I found that I couldn't do anything to adjust the amount of views. The thing is that there is millions of people on all of these platforms. So if they only get fourty views, that is because it is not shown by Tik Tok. It have nothing to do with the content. The same content got many more views only a month ago.

I also looked at how many hours I spent on tiktok this week. I spent three hours. For the amount of effort it takes to make posts and videos. It is not worth the effort anymore. I feel like I am slowly retracting from all social media. It is just not worth it anymore. If it is only for people that buy views, then there is no point to be there for the rest of us. Same on Meta too. 

26 June

I came up with a new blurb to the sci-fi book I am working on. 

Gabe takes a job at Veritas, one of the mega-corporations that owns everything on the planet. To him, it’s just another mundane work trip to the outskirts of the galaxy. Until he notices some strange things onboard the mega spaceship. Did Veritas send him and the other workers to work? Or are they really prisoners onboard this ship, being sent to an early grave?

The blurb is the hardest thing. I am still learning how to write a good one. 

Today I am making indian butter chicken (without chicken).

I found this excellent recipe on youtube and just substituted the chicken with tofu. You know what they say...

Everything taste like chicken. It is one of those things that is pretty tastless. So is tofu.

Marinating tofu can make it a great substitute for meat. I like to make large batches of food that is made from scratch and then freeze it in portion sizes for a daily dinner. It is a really great way to avoid cooking dinner every single day. Also, if you are going somewhere all you have to do is just to boil potatoes or rice or what ever you want with the portion you made.  Have a great day.

June 25

The food prices are sky high in Norway. They keep going up. I decided to go to Sweden and shop for groceries for the entire year. An investment.

Prices are about 3 times higher in Norway. In Sweden it gets cheaper the further from the Norwegian border. The shops on the Swedish and Norwegian border has "Norwegian prices".

I started making these yearly food trips once a year, about three years ago. I buy for as much money as I can aford to. You still make money doing this. Most food in Norway has doubbled in price this year. This way I can keep what I need. The staples. Sugar is double the price in Norway. Things like that.

The food I bought last year lasted me about eight to nine months, then most of it was gone. If you live close to a country where prices for food are much lower. Make food trips like this. You will save so much money. There are so much more to choose from in Sweden. Better quality, better brands. Especially if you have allergies, or are gluten-free.

Allergy Food are three times more expensive in Norway. And there is a lot more to choose from in Sweden. There is a lot of money to save doing this. 

June 20

Tomorrow is Midsommer and I am making a cake, and having friends over for coffee and cake. I am listening to a program on BBC on ultra processed food. It is really scary to think of what people normally eat. I changed the way I ate when I got sick. Started reading lables, learned to make food from scratch. Not using easy alternatives; like premade sauses, soups and more. I try to make what I eat from scratch. It isn't more difficult than using ultra processed food. It often just seem that way. It is fast and easy to cook a meal from scratch. 

The problem is that vegetables are so expensive that it is hard to afford eating good food. Ultra processed food is cheap. Good food is expensive. The best way to get around it is to grow your own food. Make things from scratch. I have learned that there are so many alternatives on the market. Things you never try as a normal food consumer. I started buying new vegetables I had never tried. Alternative flour like Teff or Chickpea flour that are both also gluten-free. I bake my own bread and cracker bread, it is not hard and not ultra processed. I hope you are having a great summer. 

June 18

Today I continued to delete my pictures on Facebook. It is not like Facebook is paying any of us for the use of our information. They take for granted that we will all give our information away for free. While they profit from it... How is that ok? Six months ago they did the: You can either PAY to not have ads OR give us access to all your information. That is when I deleted all the groups I had and stopped posting things. Six months later... They are now training their AI on all of our information since 2007. Talk about a red flag. 

What is the next thing going to be? What is the next thing we all are expected to give away so that META can profit? It is just a matter of time. All I can say is: They lost my trust six months ago and if they are not paying us. Then they are not getting my info. I am going through all the plattforms deleating what I can. Restricting what I can. Maybe you should too. 

June 14

Yesterday I went with a friend to a seminar with a group that empower women. What a great idea. 

I guess the weather is really cold and rainy in most places. Here it is absolutely beautiful, warm and sunny. We are expecting record number of tourists from southern Europe this summer. Most of them are trying to get away from the extreme heat down there. Today I published a short story collection. Small stories about life, stories I have written about anything and everything. Growth, family, illness, awakening, work, friendships. Feels good, I had some dinner in the sunshine and now I will have some coffee. I am still working on a few different stories, I am hoping to publish them all. I hope all of you have a wonderful summer day. 

June 8

My friend gave me rubarb from her garden. So it gave me the perfect opportunity to try out canning. It is nice not to have to keep more food in the freezer. I am excited to try it. I am still working through the fourth book in the series, with the help of my proof reader. It is going well. I can't wait to publish it. There will be a fifth book in the series, because I think it would be messy if I tried to cram it all in there in this fourth book.

I honestly don't know how people can write a thousand page book. If I did that, I think it would be the slowest book in history. You would have to slow everything down so much. Or so I think anyway, I might be wrong.  What do you write a thousand pages about? I will put all the books into like a box-set when I am done.

This book series is fast paced, with lots of twists and turns.

The first book is where the story begin, in this book it is ancient times in the human world (Midgard). 

The story in these books spans over almost a thousand years,

Hild is immortal battle Valkyrie, and for her time is not something she thinks about. Not the way humans do. The Kongahälla Legend book series is the story about Hild and the man she loves. It is Hild and Arnor's story.

At the same time I have started to think about what to write when this series is over. I think I might take a break from writing fantasy, but who knows.  All it takes is a new idea.

Hope you have a great day today. 

June 6

Today I filled out the form on my FB page in settings. Telling them (Facebook) that they can not use my pictures to train their AI.

But I am tired of Facebook. I will take down all my pictures, and only use messenger to communicate with some of my friends. 

I stopped using Facebook about 6 months ago when they did their latest update before this one.

They gave people two choices.

1 pay to not see ads,

2 give up the right to all your information. 

So I decided to stop using Meta platforms altoghether. No Whatsapp, No Instagram, No Facebook.

I started thinking of what I got out of being on their platforms and decided I did not benefit enough. Considering the amount of time spent.

Not using social media has been hard. I think we are all addicted. It makes us "feel like we are connected," but it is an illusion. And honestly, how much reach do you get on any social media account now days?

You have to buy ads, and even then how much reach do you have?  

I think all that time spent making videos, thinking about new content, spending money on ads.

Could be spent on making more books, making other projects that can also bring in money. 

Being on the major platforms is like having a full time job. Do we really get paid enough for all the work you do? 

I feel I don´t.

Waiting for likes does not pay my bills. 

June 3

Today we got some rain, it was nice. I am having a cleaning day today and then realaxing. I think it is important not to totally neglect everything when you write. I can get so caught up in my writing that I just don't have time to do everything else. I am making it a point to clean my office and my space. 

My proofreader is catching up with me, and I am enjoying our short summer. Sometimes it is good to take a week off. If you never give yourself time to relax and not write then you will burn out. So I am taking action and enjoying some well needed rest. I feel like I have had some time away from TiKTok now and I am not missing it. With the low views it is not worth the time it takes to keep it up, I think my books will become visible once more of them are published. There are many authors that are not on socialmedia and that are still selling books. I think this will make me happier. Today I made a pizza bottom from red lentils, it turned out very well. I will do it again, I might tweak the recipe a bit to make it better next time. It is a game changer for someone like me that are both gluten-free and plantbased. If you are looking for a great fantasy book series to start, set in viking/ancient times about a Valkyrie and her adventures in the nine worlds. Then this book series might be just what you have been looking for. Take a break from fae/dragon books and try a Valkyrie saga instead. Have a great day. 

June 1

Good Morning. I have taken the summer off social media, and I feel like it has freed up a lot of time for me. I have heard of a lot of authors say that you don't need to be on social media to sell lots of books. I have been thinking alot about this. On a personal note; I feel like everything is coming together. The last five years have been life changing for me. Just like for many people around the world with the virus etc. Now prices are rising and it is hard to keep up. I hope you all have a great summer. Please leave me a review if you read the books, it means a lot. Thank you, have a great day. 

Just a normal morning in April, 2024

Good Morining, today is a sunny spring day. I am contemplating the things I need to do. Today I will go over chapter 12. Filling in things that are missing, like enviroment, movement and adding or changing dialouge. Then I will send it to my proofreader. He just sent me chapter 5 a few days ago, so I am hoping I get chapter 6 today.

When I get a proofread chapter, I again look over it, making sure it is good. Then I wait for the next chapter to arrive. I translated my books myself, that is why it takes more time, than if I wrote them in English in the first place.

I started a new book, but this time I am writing in a different genre. It will be a Mystery book this time and only one book not a series. This book is about the disappearence of a man. So it will be compleately different than The Kongahälla Legend book series that I am writing now. Of course I will continue to write on that series too.

I only started because my proofreader works slower. So having another project to work on while I wait is fun. 

Using Less Social Media

I find that I am disconnecting more and more from all the media plattforms. They don't serve authors and is all about money now. I also disconnected from streaming plattforms that doesn't show what I think is interesting.

All of this started a long time ago, when all the annoying commercials started to bombard every program on tv.

I instead started watching streaming services. But over the years since then, new movies added are getting poorer and poorer quality. First I noticed that a lot of things I wanted to see was not available where I lived??? Why am I paying for movies I can't see? Right? The movies that is available are often part five of an already bad movie franchise.

Instead of new movies being made, from interesting new books it is now mostly endless remakes or contiuation of bad movies. The selection is not getting better, but is getting worse each month.

This month I stopped paying for 3 of the 4 streaming services I had. 

I used to have Facebook and Instagram, whats app was never my thing.

As an author I need ways to reach my readers and FB doesn't show anything unless you pay for it.

When they in November 2023, blocked access to the account "Unless" you agreed to either pay for a FB without adds OR, give FB access to ALL your inforation. Norway, EU, and the US sued Meta and I decided to not use Meta anymore.

I started using TikTok instead. 

On TikTok as an author, your content are only being shown to other authors. It is also going the same way the others did with it all being ads and ads. Finding readers is very hard.  Making content that is not shown to the right people is a waste of time. So I am cutting down on the time I spend on TiKToK and will only use it as a posting board.

I will check it once a week maybe less, post something, answer questions. But I will focus less on social media and more on this blog. Screaming into the void is pointless. It is better to focus on normal life, and live in the moment. 

It is spring 2024!

I have gone through the fourth book with beta readers. Now I am going over the fourth book again, and having it proofread. For the longest time I left the ending open. Maybe because I wasn't sure what I would do. Continue? End it there? Leave it open? Was it going to be a happy ending or a tragic ending? This story about Hild and Arnor is coming to an end. I do not want to do what I see a lot of other authors doing: keep writing when the story is told.

It feels strange but,

THERE WILL BE ANOTHER BOOK.

The more I thought about the story I realized that there was too much going on to try to wrap everything up in book 4.

I think that it is more important that the story is told well than that I finnish the story fast. Ending this story will give me free range to write what ever I want to write. If my readers find this book series and like it, then I might continue stories in this world. If not, then I will not write more about this but start something new. 

I have been thinking a lot about this.

I decided to do NaNoWriMo this year!

And I am writing in a different genre than Fantasy, I am writing a suspense thriller. And I am also editing book 4 at the same time. I am enjoying myself a lot. So far I am just trying to get the story down on paper, and choose perspective. I got the idea from watching a tiktok video. Sometimes when you see something on tv or online, it could be a story or what ever but, when you see it you know that: That thing could be a great book. 

I also found a new site to use as an author. It is called ko-fi.com and is sort of like Patreon but much simpler. It is for writers and authors and creatives. A site where our followers can choose to support our project with the price of a cup of coffee or what ever they want. It also has a blog and many other things. If you are curious or just want to check it out or support me then you can. I will keep looking for new sites that has all the features I need as an indie author.

Bound is out!

Buy the three first books in the series for 50% off @Smashwords.

I have decided to keep the book series discounted for my readers.

(If you read it and want to leave a review, I really appriciate it.) 

I want my readers to have an inexpensive way to read the books that is not Amazon.

My experience with them has not been great, so I will promote their competitors. Draft2digital has been a wonderful experience after dealing with Amazon for a couple of years. Draft2digital really cares about their authors, and in the short time that I have used them they have had several free promotions for me as an author to promote my books. This has been very refreshing.

And I did not have to be exclusive or anything like on Amazon. 

My experience crowdfunding on Kickstarter. 

It's now been about a month since I put my project up on Kickstarter.

This is my experience:

I have been bombarded by posts and messages from scammers. Kickstarter even removed a third of the money I had gotten from "backers" because it was clear to them it was all scammers. 

Most of them sent a generic message saying that they liked my clothing line and wanted to back me...

Yeah...

I don't have a clothin line.

They all are experts or know a lot of experts and what to "help" for money. Some try to guilt you into it, others are super pushy, and they all pray on authors desperation.

Indi authors are poor lets be realistic, that is why we go on a crowd funding site like Kickstarter to find the funding that we don't have.

My experience of Kickstarter is that there are NO REAL BACKERS THERE who want to back real people.

It is only scammers looking for easy prey. And that is really sad. Or...

That is my experience of Kickstarter.