Author Interview: Lars Walker, Author of West Oversea

Lars Walker is a native of southeastern Minnesota, where he grew up on a small farm. He is a graduate of Augsburg College in Minneapolis and has worked over the years as a crab meat packer in Alaska, a radio announcer, a gas station attendant, and an administrative assistant. He currently lives in the northwest suburbs of Minneapolis, where he works as librarian and bookstore manager for the Association of Free Lutheran Congregations. In his spare time, when not writing, he can often be found playing Viking with a local reenactment group. We'll talk to Lars today about his youth, his writing, and his plans for the future.


Welcome to The Book Connection, Lars. Can you tell us a bit about yourself?

Very quiet, very, very shy (although, oddly, I have no stage fright, and am a pretty good public speaker and actor). The shyness is a kind of backhanded blessing, though. It keeps me at home, where my writing laptop is.

Where did you grow up?

I was raised on my parents’ farm, southwest of Kenyon, Minnesota. I lived in the same house from my birth until I left for college at 18. I expect that’s a pretty rare experience nowadays. My novel Wolf Time is in part a tribute to my home town, a pretty Lake Woebegonesque place. And yes, I am Norwegian. And Lutheran.

When did you begin writing?

When I was a kid, I actually thought I’d be an artist when I grew up. I drew obsessively—“action” pictures that would get me in all kinds of trouble if I were a school kid today. I was never entirely happy with my drawing, though. I didn’t like the way I handled proportion, and I never really mastered perspective. Then, sometime in high school, I started experimenting with writing stories. Over the course of a couple years, I found I’d given up drawing almost completely. Writing turned out to be a much more satisfying instrument for whatever music I was trying play. It scratched my itch better.

Do you write during the day, at night or whenever you can sneak a few moments?

I generally write in the evenings, after work and supper. I often have the TV on while I write; I find a little distraction stirs the broth for me. Or, when I’m in the zone, I find Bach or Grieg are conducive to my work. I also write on Saturdays, as much as I can, but I take Sundays off. I believe in a day of rest.

What is West Oversea about?

West Oversea is a historical fantasy. The hero is an actual 11th century figure, Erling Skjalgsson of Sola, a Norwegian chieftain who became the most powerful man in Norway. In this installment in his saga, he gives up his property and power in order to avoid doing a shameful deed, and embarks with his friends and family on a voyage to Greenland, to visit Leif Eriksson (this isn’t historical name-dropping; Erling probably did know him). It’s a stormy voyage, and they end up stopping over in Iceland, and then getting blown to the strange new land recently discovered by Leif. There are plenty of opportunities for fights, and (this being historical fantasy) there’s a good deal of magical trouble too.

What inspired you to write it?

I’ve been a nut about Vikings since I was a kid (probably because nobody’d invented video games at that point in time). I started reading all I could get my hands on the subject, so I’ve been essentially doing my research ever since.

Are you a member of a critique group? If no, who provides feedback on your work?

I have some friends who are discerning readers, whose advice I’ve come to rely on. They get the unpublished text files when they’re finished (or I think so), and they tell me what they think.

Who is your favorite author?

C. S. Lewis. I love the science fiction trilogy, the Narnia books, and the apologetics. Screwtape and The Great Divorce too, of course. He was interested in Norse myth, as I am, but never did much in that field; I like to think he’d have enjoyed my stuff.

Was the road to publication smooth sailing or a bumpy ride?

I started my first novel (as a short story) around 1970, and gave it up because it wasn’t working and I really didn’t know what I was doing at that point. Around 1980, I sat down and finished the thing. It was rubbish and I knew it, but I wanted to be able to say I’d written a novel all the way through. I reasoned that someday I’d be ready to craft a book, and it would help me to know I’d done the physical work once already.

Around 1990, I figured out what I wanted to do with it, and wrote it again from scratch, without a glance at the first version.

By that time I’d gotten a few short stories published in a national magazine. The editor quit to become an agent, and asked me if I had anything he could offer to publishers. He then started shopping the book around, and he eventually sold my first published novel (a different one, as it happened) to Baen Books. It was published in 1997.

So it was a snap; it only took a little over 25 years.

Where can readers purchase a copy of your book?

Amazon carries it, and you can also get it from my current publisher, Nordskog Publishing, by going to http://www.sendmethatbook.com/.

Do you have a website and/or blog where readers can find out more?

Absolutely. My web site is http://www.larswalker.com/, and I share a blog at http://www.brandywinebooks.net/. I post there generally about five times a week.

Do you have a video trailer to promote your book? If yes, where can readers find it?

I’m working on that. As they say in the industry, it’s in development.

What is one piece of advice you would like to share with aspiring authors everywhere?

All things being equal, the prize goes to the persistent. If you have a modicum of talent, and are able to take advice, the main thing is to keep doing the thing, and to see your failures (you will have many) as learning experiences. This is easier to say than practice, but that doesn’t make it less true.

What is up next for you?

I’ve got another Erling book finished, plus a couple modern fantasies.

Is there anything you would like to add?

Thanks for your time and space.

Thanks for spending time with us today, Lars. We wish you much success.

Author R. Scot Johns Talks About His Love of Norse Mythology and The Saga of Beowulf

Today's guest blogger is R. Scot Johns, author of The Saga of Beouwulf. Scot is a life-long student of ancient and medieval literature, with an enduring fascination for Norse mythology and epic fantasy. He first came to Beowulf through his love of J. R. R. Tolkien, a leading scholar on the subject. As an Honors Medieval Literature major he has given lectures on such topics as the historical King Arthur and the construction of Stonehenge. He owns and operates Fantasy Castle Books, his own publishing imprint, and writes the blog The Adventures of an Independent Author, where you can follow his progress as he writes The Jester’s Quest, his second novel.

You can visit his website at www.fantasycastlebooks.com.

About the Book: The Saga of Beowulf is the first complete and accurate novelization of the epic Old English poem Beowulf, chronicling the tragic wars of the rising Nordic nations, the endless blood-feuds of their clans, battles with mythic creatures in an ancient heroic age, and the final, futile struggle of one man against the will of Fate that made of him a Legend.

The story follows the young Norse warrior Beowulf as he embarks upon a fateful quest for vengeance against the creature that slew his father, setting in motion a sequence of events that will bring about the downfall of a nation, all the while fleeing from the woman he has sworn to love. Based on extensive historical research and steeped in Nordic myth and lore, the saga unfolds across the frozen fields of Sweden and the fetid fens of Denmark, ranging from the rocky heights of Geatland to the sprawling battlefields of ancient France, as our hero battles men and demons in a quest to conquer his own fears.

"An epic adventure 1500 years in the making," this classic tale now comes to life once more in a bold new retelling for a modern audience.

Scot's turn:

How I Came To Love Norse Mythology

Like most fantasy authors, I’ve been greatly influenced by the work of J. R. R. Tolkien. Unlike many of them, however, it was the academic work of Professor Tolkien that inspired me as much as his creative endeavors. Like most adolescent males I was, of course, familiar with the names of Thor and Odin from an early age, run across in fable tales and myths from illustrated children’s books or Saturday morning cartoons and adventure movies. What I didn’t know at first was that the names of Gandalf and more than half the Dwarves of Thorin’s band that I had read of in The Hobbit, derived from that same Nordic tradition.

Not until I delved into The Lord of the Rings and scoured thoroughly its many appendices did I begin to have a sense that there was more beyond the book itself that Tolkien himself had drawn upon for inspiration. From the Eddas has come the list of names that gave us Dwalin and Balin and their kin, and indeed, the race of Dwarves themselves. And thus began my fascination with Norse mythology.

Although the Nordic mythos has much in common with the classical Greco-Roman cycle, drawing as it does upon a proto Indo-European stock, there is in it a fatalistic outlook that is well at home in those cold, harsh, northern climes, an aspect that lends to it a host of cruel and ruthless elemental beings: where Greek myths give us nymphs and satyrs, the Norse tales sing of Frost Giants and Fire Drakes. The Icelandic sagas, that great repository of ancient northern folklore, present us with an endless litany of trolls and ogres and other foul demons, matched in each by equally hardy heroes, both human and divine. The Nordic myths are fraught with sorcery and spells, elves and enchanted treasure.

It is from the Volsunga Saga, for example, and its later Germanic retelling in the Nibelungenleid, that Tolkien drew his inspiration for the story of a mighty Ring of Power, a talisman whose curse of lust and greed is passed to anyone that wears it. This tragic tale would also provide 19th century composer Richard Wagner with the materials for his epic Ring cycle.

In the Old English poem Beowulf, a story set in 6th century Scandinavia, we find a dragon sleeping in a subterranean grotto on a pile of hoarded gold, awoken to fiery wrath by the pilfering of a jewel-encrusted cup by a solitary thief. Not the talking dragon Smaug we fans of Tolkien know so well, but his direct precursor. Indeed, in Beowulf we find a sword blade that melts under the corrosive touch of demon’s blood, a dark haired, dark eyed councilor who corrupts his king with poisoned words, and a confrontation with a mead-hall door-guard, all of which bear a marked resemblance to events in The Lord of the Rings. None of which is surprising, given Professor Tolkien’s status as one of the foremost scholars on Beowulf.

It was this, in fact, that led me on my ten year quest to bring the epic tale of Beowulf to a modern audience in my own heroic fantasy novel The Saga of Beowulf. As Tolkien relied heavily on Norse mythology and lore, and Beowulf in particular, in the creation of his Middle-Earth saga, I drew inspiration from Tolkien’s work in order to bring Beowulf to life once more.

Scot has an amazing website, so be sure to stop by.

WIN PRIZES!!!

THE SAGA OF BEOWULF VIRTUAL BLOG TOUR '09 will officially begin on March 2 and end on March 27. You can visit Scot's blog stops at www.virtualbooktours.wordpress.com in March to find out more about this talented author!

As a special promotion for all our authors, Pump Up Your Book Promotion is giving away a FREE virtual book tour to a published author or a $50 Amazon gift certificate to those not published who comments on our authors' blog stops. More prizes will be announced as they become available.