Available now on paperback and on October 31st in ebook format!

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The finale is finally here!

Available now on paperback and on October 31st in ebook format!

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I had my first radio interview last week on a local station, KOOP 91.7 FM, on a show called Writing on the Air.

These are some of my reflections:

My wife listened to the interview that evening while I walked Logan. When I came back, she told me, with a big smile on her face, that she really enjoyed it. I haven’t listened to it, but I have considered how I would have answered the questions better or expanded on certain things. Then again, I’m a writer, not a speaker.

Tim Ferriss posted on Twitter:
”It is far more lucrative and fun to leverage your strengths instead of attempting to fix all the chinks in your armor. The choice is between multiplication of results using strengths or incremental improvement fixing weaknesses that will, at best, become mediocre. Focus on better use of your best weapons instead of constant repair.”

So, this is my way of focusing on my strengths rather than trying to fix my weaknesses. My spoken English is not perfect, and I’m learning that having a few minutes to talk about broad topics is probably not my ideal setting. It takes my overly analytical, overthinking brain some time to gather my ideas and speak them coherently. Still, it was a good experience that I’m eager to repeat.

These are some of the questions I remember and how I would answer them if it were a written interview:

1) What would you tell someone who wants to become a writer?

I said: “Tell the truth.”

This is a fine answer, but without context, it feels incomplete. I meant to say that first, you must choose what kind of writer you want to be. Is your aim to be an overnight sensation and sell as many books as possible? If the answer is yes, you should take courses on outlining and closely watching market analytics. You should write to market and carefully craft a product that sells. Nothing wrong with that.

But, if you aim to become an artist, a writer of novels that stand the test of time, then telling the truth is the only way. Even in fiction, the soul of the story is truth. The difference between fiction and nonfiction is that in fiction, the truth is dressed in fantasy or fantastical events. It’s imaginary people carrying out real settings and having real conversations. The best books in history are ones that don’t shy away from certain truths that the author saw coming from a mile away. 1984, Farehtheit 451, Brave New World, etc., are books ahead of their time by authors brave enough to tell the truth, at whatever the cost. As artists, our job is not to be nice, to pander to the crowd, or to be liked. Our job is to tell the truth.

How you measure success is important.

2) What is the 444 series about?

I said: “About four archangels trapped in our universe and looking for a way out.”

I would add that it’s about four archangels trapped in our universe that are taking extreme and, sometimes, deadly measures to get out and overtake the Ancestor’s throne. At a high level, it’s a race to power, with whatever means necessary. Of course, there is a lot more to the series. I didn’t even mention the main characters. You will have to read it to find out how it unfolds.

3) What is the hardest part about selling my books?

I said: “Since I don’t write to market, the hardest part is explaining my books.”

This is correct. The more complete answer would be simply: “Marketing.”

Whenever I hear or think about that word, I think of the great authors in history. I imagine J. D. Salinger setting up a booth and chatting up potential readers at an event or Hemingway gathering meme pictures for a social media post. It’s a somewhat ridiculous scenario, but this is where we’re at. Would they thrive today if any of them were starting out right now? That’s an interesting question.

My difficulties in selling my books are the same difficulties most authors face: there’s just too much stuff out there competing for people’s attention. Some authors believe it’s just a matter of numbers. The more books they have out, the more chances they have of being discovered and the more books they’ll sell. So there’s an army of people who are pumping out books as if they were story factories. On the popularity front, I find it impossible to compete with these people, so I have to out-compete them with quality.

This means that it takes me about six months to a year to complete the first draft of a novel. Then comes editing, cover designing, re-writing, etc. By the time I release it, I end up with a quality story that gets lost in the soup of word vomit that is the publishing world.

Not only that, but books are pumped out with such speed, such carelessness that the reader has gotten used to a certain type of story. I have read a few modern books lately, all of them with an increasingly easier vocabulary and sentences that are so close to nonfiction books that I often wonder what happened to prose and subtlety. Lately, it feels more like I’m reading a blockbuster movie or a comic book than a novel. It’s fine for entertainment value, but as soon as I read the final page, the book exits my brain as fast as it entered it. I’m left the same as I was before I read it. Unchanged. I don’t know what that means for the literary world or my books. It comes back to the question of what kind of author you want to be. Sometimes, the best you can do is hop off the machine, watch it from afar, and enjoy the calmness of solid ground. I’ll write the best books I can write, each one a snapshot of my journey. Eventually, someone will notice.

4) Do you outline your books?

I said: “No.”

I trust my subconscious to come up with better symbolism and themes than my conscious mind ever could. So, I try to abstain from any deep planning of my stories. I do flesh out ideas before I start writing, and I’ll often leave little notes when I finish my writing session so that the next day, I can come to it knowing what needs to happen next in broader terms. I leave enough room for tangents, knowing that if I sleep well, my brain will take the story in a completely different direction. That’s what happened in Messengers Rising, where my brain came up with the idea for Istahar’s back story out of nowhere. That wasn’t planned at all, and it’s my favorite part of that book.

Writing is playtime for me. If I were to worry about the plot, beats, archetypes, and the hero’s journey at a conscious level, it would become a job, a chore. I would be like a creative chef with an idea for a dish who ended up flipping burgers at a fast food restaurant because someone told him those two spices could never go together.

When I used to make music, I knew the basic chords of a guitar, but everything else was made up on the spot. I didn’t know what any of the notes and chords were called, and I didn’t care. It sounded cool, aggressive, beautiful, calming, or whatever emotion I had at the moment. I had been playing make-believe all my life and enjoyed it. I want to continue creating in the same fashion. I might sometimes know the beginning and the ending, but everything in between is a mystery to be uncovered.

5) what is your writing routine?

I said: “Write first thing in the morning before the day gets away from you.”

Yes, but also: I sit in the same chair next to a window because sunlight puts me in a good mood, and I listen to the same instrumental music because lyrics are distracting. I use noise-canceling headphones because my neighbors have the loudest car in the world. And I stay there for two to three hours and give myself a good writing opportunity. Whatever happens, happens. Sometimes that means one sentence, other times multiple chapters.

I write before checking my emails and before logging on to social media. I need my brain fresh and uncorrupted by current events. I sometimes turn off my phone, watch, and any device with notifications. The only things I might do before writing are eating a protein and fat-rich breakfast, feeding and walking my dog, exercising, and drinking green tea because I found coffee puts me in a weird manic state where I’m too jittery and often leads to bad decisions. Clarity is paramount.

Sometimes, I might journal right when I get out of bed. As mentioned in The Artist’s Way, morning pages are a great way to silence the monkey brain.

That’s it for now. If I remember more questions, I’ll add them here.

If you like what you read and would like to support me, you can purchase my books at books.relvingonzalez.com or by clicking the Shop link on my website.

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TV shows and books like The Last Kingdom and the Viking video game Assassins Creed: Valhalla fueled the fire for the first book in the series, Hefnd. Before I knew it, I was immersed in Norse mythology, gods, giants, Nordic chants, and music. I enjoyed imagining the story as I explored the lands of England and listened to the amazing soundtrack to that game. I began writing this story as an experiment using Kindle Vella to see if I could commit to around a thousand-word chapters weekly. I finished the story in ten chapters, but the story changed (improved) dramatically by the time it went on sale as a book.

With Path of the Hybrids, I found myself again immersed in Mythology, but also Genetic Engineering, reading (and sometimes listening) to Brave New World by Aldous Huxley while I sanded 2 x 12″ pine boards in 100-degree Texas weather to build our bookshelves.

The yet-to-be-named conclusion to the series is coming along nicely. As of this writing, it stands at over 22,000 words. I’m drawing inspiration from our trip to Norway, having a son, a sense of adventure, loss, and grief, and trusting that life works in ebbs and flows. Ultimately, it sorts itself out if you put in the work and allow the higher power, whatever you want to call it, to use you and your talents in its (His?) master plan.

I hope you enjoy what I have in store for you, not only for this series but for the future. There are a lot of projects in the works, which I will post about as they near completion. As always, feel free to email me or comment. Until next time.

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The updated links will probably live here for now: books.relvingonzalez.com

But I’ll probably create a website on my own page for them at some point.

See you on the road,

Happy reading!

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10:00 a.m. – 6:00 p.m.

Author Indie Book Fair | The British International School  of Houston | 2203 North Westgreen Blvd | Katy, TX 77449

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10:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m.

Greater Austin Book Festival | Central Library | 710 W. César Chávez St. | Austin, TX 78701

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Reverie Books | 5330 Menchaca Rd Ste D | 512-368-4455 | Austin TX 78745

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Naturally, I had to make things just a little more complicated than packing our bags and showing up at the airport. A week before leaving, I checked my passport, and saw it had been expired for almost a year.

The situation was no mystery to the people in the Passport Agency at Houston, who dealt with hundreds of others in a similar position.

After a day in Houston, I arrived in Austin a day before our flight with a shiny new passport in hand.

With a mixture of excitement and sadness about leaving our dog behind, we waited in the terminal, watching as they prepared our airplane and put in some extra phalange.

Food, so much food in the 10+ hour flight. We had our hands stretched out before the flight attendant ever spoke a word. Pasta, creme brûlée, pancakes, coffee, cake, cookie, sandwich; useless subscriptions finally became useful as we watched full series and various movies while eating.

 

 

Bergen embraced us in all its green and blue glory. Temperature sat comfortably between warm and chilly. Our noses cleared, and our stomachs growling, after rolling up our luggage to Bergenhus, we headed into town. We had our first meal, a hot dog at the famous Trekroneren. This is where I first met a small breed of bird which followed me through every stop of this trip. More on that later. I tried the lamb hotdog, but had to finish it while walking on account of a certain war with a tiny bird. It had been a spectacle the family next to us found hilarious.

Bergen was a pit stop; a place to land. We did a small hike as a warm up, and took an early cruise through the fjords toward Flåm.

 

Flåm

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Flåm was overflowing with tourists arriving at the port. We grabbed a pizza at the bakery and purchased our bus tickets to Gudvangen. Note to future self: Try to use Skyss and only Skyss busses when possible. You will save a lot of money.

Flåm is very small, and can be a tourist trap with overpriced gift shops and food if you’re not careful. There is a nice, viking themed, restaurant near a hotel. We opted to save as much money as we could for activities and souvenirs, instead and got a pizza at at the bakery. We found it worth it to walk around and look at the water in awe and the various shops to compare prices of souvenirs with other stores around Norway. We ended up buying most of our souvenirs in Bergen and at a random small shop in front of a waterfall that had items on clearance. After seeing everything there was to see, we took a bus to Gudvangen.

 

Gudvangen

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Gudvangen had one of the most amazing fjords. If we were people who planned things to the minute, we would have booked a kayak tour through the fjord. But on the first day, we were OK with eating at the restaurant and walking around town.

Viking Valley

I had wanted to try archery for years. It only took going to the other side of the world to finally try it. It was as much fun as it looked. Getting the axe to stick to the tree trunk proved much more difficult than the local, living, viking made it seem. During the tour, one of the people living there takes you through most of the houses and gives people a lot of historical background about the village. When we returned home, we learned their blacksmith is one of the best in Norway. It was a missed opportunity to take a blacksmithing lesson with him.

After spending the night on Gudvangen, we took another bus to Aurland.

 

Aurland

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Aurland is a peaceful small town outside the bounds of busy Flåm. Here, AirBnB was king in finding an affordable and beautiful spot. We had rented a cabin proper to finding the AirBnB but once we saw it, we knew we had struck gold and changed our reservations.

The town has a small church with the only bus stop in front. We waited at that bus stop to take our shuttle to the Stegastein Viewpoint. There are several amazing spots to stop along the way.

 

Flåm Zipline

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The time had come to face our fears in the longest zipline in all of Scandinavia.

In the end, it wasn’t as bad as I thought. The only scary part is sitting on the swing chair waiting to be launched, staring down and realizing how high up you are. But once the ride starts, everything is smooth and goes by in a flash.Viking Valley

At the bottom of the zipline there are bike rental services as well as some snacks. Since we had our luggage with us, we had to walk for almost two miles carrying three backpacks and a rolling suitcase to the nearest trains station to head to Oslo. We enjoyed views of rivers and scarred houses, as well as small tunnels and hills.

 

Train to Oslo

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Once in Flamsbana, we had to hop off in Myrdal to switch trains to Oslo. The views aboard Bergensbanen made you feel like you were in a movie looking at a make belief set were everything looks perfectly in harmony. The train stop had a small cafe with a lot of snacks, hot dogs, pancakes, drinks, Wi-Fi, and restroom.

During the train ride, I watched the entire series Ancient Apocalypse, which I had been meaning to watch. It’s great to use the downtime to catch up on things you seem to never have time to do. Of course I was constantly licking pause to look out the window in awe of the view.

 

Oslo

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Get the Oslo Pass. Seriously. It includes all Skyss bus passes, pretty much all of the museums, ferry rides, and discounts on food. We stayed at the Radisson Blu Plaza, right next to the train station, museums, and bus stops. This saves us a lot of walk time, and had one fo the best breakfast buffets I have ever been to.

We visited a few museums and it is obvious the city is rich in history. Two and a half days were barely enough to see it all.

Norsk Folkemuseum

Reserve at least two hours for this museum. It is a large open-air museum with more than 150 buildings, which means it has a ton of stuff to see and walk round. It has its own replica of a stave church, a village, as well as a candy shop and what looked like a four story British museum with furniture, clothing and more.

Fram, Maritime, and Kon-Tiki

Prepare to walk. There are a few museums right next to each other. The Fram Museum, The Maritime Museum and the Kon-Tiki museum are right across each other, and are jam packed with cool stuff to see. I absolutely loved The Fram Museum, where you can walk not only board ships, but inside of them. There is a lot of information and exhibitions, as well as a simulated ocean around the main boat. It’s very cool. The Kon-Tiki museum has exhibits of real excavations, as well as rafts. The maritime museum has a small vikings section as well as a lot of scale models of various boats and ships used during the time.

Vigeland Park, Royal Palace, Munch

The next day, we visited the Holocaust Museum, Vigeland Park, the Royal Palace, and ended with a visit to the Munch Museum. We had a blast! It was very hot, and this was probably one of our longest walks on this trip without counting the hikes. Vigeland park was a nice place to sit under a shade and eat some snacks to regain our energy before heading out to the Royal Palace. It was immense, with hundreds of sculptures that are sure to get your attention.

 

Bergen

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We returned to Bergen taking the same train we took to get to Oslo. Our intention was to stay there for the remaining week, slowing down and taking in the local culture as best we could.

We conquered the steps of Ulriken and were rewarded with amazing Ox tacos and lamb hotdogs at the top.

Hakkon’s Hall and other notable places

The last Joyride

As it usually does, the thought of the trip ending sparked a fire in us. There were a lot of things we hadn’t done yet: we hadn’t tasted the famous goat cheese at Undredal, or visited the historic church at Borgund, or saw the famous tunnels of Norway. So we took. bus to the airport, rented a car, and drove for a whole day. We returned to our AirBnb well beyond midnight. If you rent an electric car, download the Tesla app, set up an account, and get your credit card information into your account. Charging at the Tesla superchargers was a vastly superior experience than the other overly complex stations. If you still have souvenirs to buy, int he last picture you will find a nice shop we found in front of a famous waterfall.

If you enjoyed this article, perhaps you will also enjoy my fiction writing. How about you check it out with a free book? Head over to www.relvingonzalez.com/subscribe to find out more!

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Luna (Book 1 of 444 Series) – May 2023 Revamp

This was my first book. I continue to improve it and its amazon page. This time, I redid the cover, blurb, and added some A+ content. Check it out!

Hefnd – May 2023 Release

Glia – April 2023 release

Thank you for your support! Share with your friends!

Upcoming titles:

Sol (Book 2 of 444 series)

444 Prequel

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