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!