Erik Martenson's Blog

2024 was a weird year. I remember it starting out cold, with ice covering the inner fjord, lots of smoke on the water and snow on the ground, lots of snow. In the middle of January it was a literal blizzard raging outside. Then at the end of the same month, the store I’m working at closed down for a complete refit. So after working for that a couple of weeks and shivering through the cold winter, I took a writecation to Malta. I stayed in the city of St. Julian’s, worked on my new novel, and took a guided trip around the island. After returning from Malta I took a flight north to my home town of Tromsø, to see my mom. I also met a friend there visiting from Romania, Gabriel. Then, after returning to Oslo and finding the snow gone but the cold persisting, I got on a flight for Nice, France. We’re talking beginning of March, and south of France was just starting to get warm. In the middle of all this I had completely changed my lifestyle and gone carnivore. My wife and I stayed in a cozy AirBnB in Nice, ventured around, and also visited Monaco, adding another sovereign state to my list. When we got back home, snow had returned, and the store was ready for a grand reopening! Come May it was time for another writecation, this time to Naples and Ischia. A wonderful time, but too short, as I already had used most of my vacation time during the closing of the store. Summer came, and with the expected heat of a solar maximum. It was a good time here in Oslo, but unexpectedly I got some problem with my left eye and needed surgery. I had a retinal tear and the surgeon had to put Humpty Dumpty back together, resulting in a cancelled trip to Japan. Instead I visited Cyprus for the first time, writing, and taking guided tours around the island, including exploring the Turkish sector. That was in November, marking the final trip of an eventful year. To sum it up, I visited six countries, not including my own, bringing my lifetime total up to forty.

I did not publish a book this year, but I managed to read 21 books, 3 less than during 2023. However, the number of pages is almost the same, at 8,344 versus 8,453 the year before. The shortest book was Detonation Boulevard by Alastair Reynolds (36 pages), and the longest Exodus by Peter F. Hamilton (908 pages). You can see the complete list here at Goodreads.

Being a weird year with unexpected events, like my eye surgery, 2024 brought one new personal record: The number of TV show episodes watched. As I’m writing this, I’ve seen 607 episodes this year. An astonishing 303 of them at Disney+ since I worked my way through the whole of Lost, at 121 episodes.

While I’m watching more TV shows, the number of movies seen each year has dropped sharply. I used to watch between two hundred and three hundred movies annually, but in the recent years it’s been less than a hundred. Last year it was 48, while 2024 brought 71.

As I sit here on New Year’s Eve and reminisce, dear Reader, with a glass of Port by my right hand, and the iPad by the left, a roaring fire is dancing in my … eh, on my 65 inch OLED TV, and outside it’s snowing again. It’s been a crazy year, with so many unexpected turns. But at the end of it, here we are, ready for another orbit around the old star we call Sun.

And while I didn’t publish the new book, I’ve been working hard making it my best novel yet, and I’ll be ready to publish spring 2025. While some of the characters are the same, like Lieta, Thula, and Mark, it’s a new trilogy with a new and dangerous enemy, taking our heroes to the most horrifying place in the galaxy, and beyond!

Happy New Year!

So far into 2023 I’ve had a slow & steady progress with my WIP: The third novel in The Last Navigator trilogy/series. I have a new methodology where I only write 500 words each day. Not one word more, or one word less. Just 500 every day.

Twitter is going better, and I’m gaining followers there. I’ve set up a link tree, making it easier for new people to follow my different sites and updates.

https://linktr.ee/erikmartenson

In 2022 I sold more books than in 2021, so it was a good year. My sci-fi series has experienced a good beginning into what will be a decade long project. At least.

If anyone would like to support my burgeoning career as an author, and if you also like sci-fi, now is a good time to buy my books. They can be read on any smartphone, tablet, or computer using free apps. See my linktr.ee below. The third book that finishes the first trilogy will be completed this year. I strongly recommend the English versions. Consider them director cuts.

Many people ask me about paperback editions, or audio books. Because of the energy & resource crisis I will not be offering paperbooks as of now. I also think the market for paper books is in sharp decline, and I say this with sadness, because after all I grew up in a bookstore. Digital media is far the most environmentally friendly way of telling the story. And about audio books, automatic conversion of text into speech is getting better fast, so I don’t think it’s necessary for me to spend time on developing this. It will take care of itself, and I can spend more time on writing.

Have a great new year, everyone!

~Erik

New writecation, in two parts!

First we visited Porto, Portugal a month ago, and now we’re at a splendid beach hotel in Palma de Mallorca, Spain, the neighbor of Portugal.

We’re having a blast, and I can sit and write on the balcony overlooking the pool and getting some sunshine at the same time while sipping some excellent and cheap Cava, the Spanish Champagne!

We love it here!

Because of the Covid-19 outbreak and the political panic it caused we didn’t get to travel much this year. We did go to Bergen, Norway, in March, and stayed one week at Børsen hotel. Then when the panic settled, I finally got to use the remaining 4 weeks of vacation. That’s how we ended up in Italy.

So, we rented a car and did 3 weeks in Toscana, where we stayed in the medieval fortress town of Montemerano, and simply drove around visiting neighboring cities and towns. And I did a lot of writing.

The last week is here in Rome, and of course there is a lot to see. Still, I manage to write a few hundred words every day.

In case you don’t follow me on Twitter, here’s the progress report:

I’ve written 38,277 words on the sequel to Talos Rising. That’s certainly more than half the book.

Stay tuned for more, and please follow on Twitter and Instagram.

Got my first review on Talos Rising today on Amazon:

https://amzn.to/3wEGzAU

I couldn’t be more excited.

Quiz: How good on a scale from 1 to 10 must a book be before you write a review, or how bad?

Between 2016 and 2020 not much happened. I kept reading books, but writing was slow, actually almost nonexistent. These were the years between moving from the city of Shenzhen in the South of China to Tromsø, my birth town, extremely far North in Norway, and until we moved to Oslo, the capital of Norway. Life is much better in the South, and recently I’ve had the time and energy to rekindle my career as a novelist. For a long time I’ve wanted to make my books available globally, and since the Norwegian publisher basically dropped the Navigator series, it became a blessing in disguise. Now I can focus on the bigger market as my books are written in English. My plan for this decade is to release one book every summer, up to and including the ninth. The tenth book will be an anthology with short stories from the same universe. Dear Goodreader, I hope you will follow me on this journey, read, comment, review, and spread the word! Frequent updates will be available on Twitter and IG. Thanks and Enjoy! Erik :-)