Yes, first book, and hopefully it will be a series. That's how I conceived the project, so books 2, 3 and 4 (and maybe even 5, if I do the prequel) wouldn't be afterthoughts or attempts to cash in if the book is a success. A series is how I've envisioned the story from the start. It's a BIG story, truly epic, spanning generations and continents.
Of course, I have to get the first book published before they'll publish the series...
Anyway, it's about the wife of Eirik the Red, who is also the mother of Leif Eiriksson, and little is known about her. We know where she was born, where she lived, who her kids and parents were, and that she refused to sleep with her DH--who was booted out of two countries for killing people, remember!--until he converted to Christianity...so he built her a church! That was the fact that sparked the whole project. "What was this woman like?" I wondered. She seemed like she must have been really something!
Her name is basically unpronounceable by Americans and it includes letters we don't have in our alphabet, but it sounds something like "Thyoth-hild." (I'll call her "Thj" for short, since those first 3 letters of her name are in our alphabet!) The first book follows a childhood danger that leads to her betrothal and early marriage to Eirik, his affair with a neighbor and the ramifications of that relationship, and a natural disaster that sparks violence and leads to Eirik's 3-year banishment from Iceland. Because of that banishment, he decides to uproot his family and friends and settle Greenland.
I always talk about the book in terms of the famous quote about Ginger Rogers doing everything Fred Astaire did, only backwards and in high heels--that's Thj's story, too. She was part of the first European settlement in Greenland, too, but she was having babies and raising another woman's children as she did it. At the time childbirth was more dangerous than war, so this is no small thing! I think she was a pretty remarkable person, and I've fallen in love with the Norse in general and with Iceland. Gorgeous country.
Book 1 ends as they prepare to leave for Greenland. Book 2 will pick up on the longship as they sail across the North Atlantic, losing 2 ships along the way.
So that's the book. Hopefully it's full of compelling characters, as well as some sex and violence appropriate to the tale I'm telling. It's definitely a fun read, not great art, though!
I could babble about it all day and get no work done on it though. Not smart!
Thanks for asking, Isa.
