[ Silence ]
I’m K.W. Penndorf.
And my background in writing would be Freya and the Dragon Egg.
That’s my first book that got published. I’m currently working on book two.
I have the title for it already – Freya and the Battle at the Aal Thing.
When you read book one, and when you start doing, hopefully,
a little research into the Viking era, and Denmark –
I don’t know if you can see the map behind me.
I used to always write.
That was kind of my thing was always dabbling in writing.
English came naturally to me. I’m the youngest of four, and I
love storytelling. I like to engage listeners, entertain them.
So I used to do theater, and I worked at CBS for a while.
Then I decided I would like to attempt writing.
I’m from New York, so when I was working in Manhattan,
I was on a train ride, and I just got this vision
of a little girl in a Viking graveyard who found this object.
And my natural instincts took over and said, okay, let’s play with that.
What is it? Who is she?
So I decided, since Vikings were real, let’s do a little bit of research.
And unfortunately, the research took over and took over and
took over and took over, prolonging my ability to write.
But, once book one came out, I’m excited to say that
a lot of people said, wow, I actually learned something.
So the teacher background in me is very excited that children are learning bits.
Even adults – I’ve had adults review my book and come back and say, wow,
I looked up a lot of those things.
And indeed, I could see that the author infused – I don’t want to say reality.
Some if it is real, but a lot of it is mythological what the Vikings believed.
My series will be nine books. Because in my research,
I discovered that the Vikings believed in nine mythological realms.
And I decided – done. Right? It has to go through
all nine realms before her quest and adventure can be complete.
Book one, I had built kind of a story map,
which is something that I used a lot of sticky notes for – and Post-it notes.
I will use large Post-it notes to kind of map out my chapters.
That’s what you’ll see in these large blue and large green.
The small little green ones are my attempt at just remembering
items that I might want to fill in here or there.
I try to end my sticky notes with a cliffhanger so I can kind of
get a gist where I want to bring the chapter to an end.
Sometimes those cliffhangers actually become the middle
of my chapter, or they weave themselves into a second chapter.
It can be a little difficult when writing a long series.
Because there’s so much information that I just want to
get out to the readers and just build the storyline.
So I have a story arc, which is all nine books,
and then have individual book arcs.
I have to definitely keep track of every character [chuckles] and what they do.
But more importantly, what they do in each book.
All of my chapters – all of my books – sometimes
I’ll handwrite them more than once. But typically, what’s going on right now,
I will write it on these legal-size notebook pads.
Then I will put them onto a Word document, which then
gets sent to the editor and publisher once I’ve finished with typing that up.
So written on paper tends to be a pretty darn rough copy.
I did read chapter seven, which I finished last night,
to my husband, who was kind enough to listen to it,
and he claims there’s not going to be a lot of editing.
But I’m sure – pretty sure there will be a lot. [chuckles]
So sometimes things that get edited out are maybe misspelled words
or maybe I just haven’t thought yet of a name for a character.
And instead of sitting there forever deciding what the
character’s name should be, I’ll just move on and put
an X right there, knowing I need to put that in later.
I also think I have right here something that, when I start typing,
I know it’s going to stop me.
And I’m going to have to go online and start doing a little research.
For example, Freya came across a dark-winged bird.
Well, that’s just not creative enough. I know that this dark-winged bird
has a little bit more of character, and you’ll see this bird throughout my series.
So I want to go in and actually research what type of bird.
I know it’s going to be a falcon, but what type of falcon, in particular.
Because I know that the Vikings used falcons.
So that will sometimes slow down my editing process.
Because of the Danish infusion in my story, I definitely have to
try and be as careful as I can. My brother-in-law is from Denmark,
so sometimes I’ll text him and just say, do you have this animal in your country?
Or what would be a food that maybe people could easily get?
And so on and so forth.
And he does his best to help me out with that information.
So we left off from chapter six, and I’m moving on with – one moment.
I just need to space it correctly.
Because that will annoy my editor if it is not spaced properly.
And I need – five, there.
All righty. So, Eric, stop – whoops.
Sometimes I’m not spelling properly, and I catch that too.
I have to add a lot of fake words to the dictionary on Microsoft Word
because I have created fake words, like noggle and grogger.
Grogger is a – like, a beast in one of my – a couple of my chapters
and throughout the series. And it doesn’t think it’s a
real word because it’s not, so I have to add things like that.
So her voice cut through his laughter.
So bring him to the serious danger, she was announcing.
I also have a lot of arrows. So I also have to follow where my next thing was.
I also have an insert from another page because I will write everywhere.
So I have to get that all together.
And sometimes that breaks my train of thought.
I tend not to leave notes on my document.
I can do track changes, but typically I use all my notes here.
So because I hate dark-winged bird,
it’s time to go to the internet and find the falcon that I chose not too long ago.
I think it’s a peregrine falcon, but I want to double-check.
I also try not to repeat words too often. Because I don’t want that to
sound boring, to hear bird, bird, bird a thousand times.
The irony is, I actually put “peregrine falcon” and then
“falcon” in here, so maybe that’ll get boring. I can re-read it later.
And should it get too uninteresting,
that’s what I have an editor for, to catch all of that.
Because I write middle grade, I do want to, in book two,
kind of bring up things that took place in book one.
I like that kids can be re-introduced to something.
I like that they come back to it through, kind of, a form of repetition.
But it’s got to be catchy and interesting.
And I just sent the first six chapters to my editor, and I did a lot of rehashing
and recapping and bringing up things that took place.
And I’m kind of hoping that the editor likes my take on it, and not that
she’s going to say, it’s too in-your-face. Get it out. Cut it.
I don’t quite want my Vikings to sound like my modern-day girl.
So I actually have a little folder here. These three pages, in particular,
are very important to me because they’re all words that I kind of pulled
from a source that I feel sounds Viking-ish, which would be Beowulf.
People can correct me if it isn’t. But I like the language.
I like the lingo. I like how it’s phrased.
And I will infuse that type of verse into how my Vikings speak.
Now I have to follow a little asterisk to find where my next little part was.
Because sometimes what will take place is, I always write on the lines,
and I kind of re-read it and see if it jives.
And then maybe I need to insert something over here in the margins.
Maybe I’ll discover, I don’t know, even a new word I put on the page –
something that just will trigger maybe part of the arc for another book.
And I have folders upon folders, kind of like these, of just ideas I’ve jotted down.
And just quick backstory – Eric is a little boy, a Viking boy,
who Freya befriends when she goes back in time.
And he’s kind of helping her on his quest.
And he is a Berserk. So he has this bearskin coat,
and Berserkers, according to the Vikings, believed that
they could go into battle and would be immortal.
So we actually say today, when someone goes crazy,
we say, oh, you’re going berserk. And that’s where it comes from.
Because these people thought they could just go crazy in battle.
So I love toying with the idea of immortality if there’s a catch.
I also like the idea that perhaps they could become not – or become mortal.
So anyway, so Eric has this coat, and it can’t leave his possession.
But if he puts the coat on, bam, he becomes a Berserk,
and he has to go crazy.
Well, obviously, he doesn’t want to go crazy and kill Freya.
And I was, like, oh my gosh. It’s winter.
Freya goes back in time in book two, and it’s winter.
Wouldn’t Eric put on a coat and be warm?
Like, then he’s going to kill her. That’s not cool.
And I just happened to be looking through all of my notes,
and sure enough, like, years ago, when I was first plotting out the book,
didn’t I make a note that said, if Eric reverses the coat so it’s
inside-out, he can wear it and doesn’t transform.
I know this might sound weird, but I swear to you, someone else
must have written that because that idea, I have no recollection of it.
So thank goodness I took notes and wrote them down.
So kids, take notes and write them down because
you don’t have to memorize everything in your world.
All right. Let’s get back to this.
So another branch came shooting back at her …
[ Silence ]