Hallo Veeky Forums
I posted a thread last year about my decision to spend a year in the rural cabin that my family inherited from my grandparents in Haugesund, Norway.
I posted a few threads since then detailing my lifestyle and my attempts to write and so on.
And now (finally!) I can let you guys know that my book is due to be published in Autumn 2017 under the title "In The Midst Of Some Grey City" (translated).
Any question you guys have?
Hey OP!
Sounds interesting, can you give us a summary of the story please?
Did you translate it yourself?
Did you self publish?
Does it have anything sexual in it?
What's that title in Norwegian?
what was your budget
Hi dude, thanks!
The basic summary is as follows:
A 26-year-old man is admitted to a psychiatric ward following the death of his father, a long-time alcoholic that his son left to move to Oslo. He is allowed to leave the psychiatric ward to attend the funeral, but is advised to return and complete his stay by the concerned staff. Instead he visits his father's home after the funeral and discovers a memoir his father has written. This surprises him, as his father was a quiet and isolated man who never talked about his love for books and so on, but in the attic of the house he finds boxes full of novels. The son realizes he never really knew his father, since their relationship was distant and strained since their mother decided to leave him and moved to Sweden with her new partner. The son, who lived a rather sheltered life and even in Oslo barely leaves his apartment except for work, decides to in a sense "re-live" the life of his father by visiting each of the places mentioned in the book in the order they are mentioned. He has always felt inferior to his father and has always despised himself for failing to live up to the apparently masculine ideal his father represented. He travels to his father's hometown and learns of a shy young man who once lived there, he visits his ex-girlfriend who never married and still fondly remembers her first love, his father. He visits many people that his father essentially "cut out" of his life when he became a rather depressed and stubbornly independent man, just, the son reflects, like the way he is becoming. He returns to the psychiatric ward and discovers that his room is now occupied by another patient, who turns out to be a school friend he has not seen in years. The two boys were very competitive during their school days and fell out after they were each asked to replace the lead singer of a popular local band during a summer tour and agreed not to do so for the sake of their friendship, even though the other boy did end up going with them. Each of them is from Oslo, and returning there by train the protagonist lies about his life there to hide the fact he is essentially a hermit with a dead-end job. His friend, he discovers, lives in a wealthy area of the city and has a fiancee and a well-paying job and have just placed a downpayment on their apartment. Visiting their home the protagonist tells a story about his own great career, his girlfriend etc, then leaves the dinnertable and cries in the bathroom. He remembers a passage in his father's memoir about how he had visited his son (the protagonist) in university dressed in his finest suit, and lied that he had received a promotion and was beginning to date again. The protagonist leaves the party claiming his girlfriend is locked out of their flat, but travels instead to Sweden to visit his mother. His boss calls him and asks why he isn't at work, but their foul relationship already involves the protagonist being overworked...
Hey! OP here. It is written in Norwegian (I hope it gets translated). A publishing house is publishing it. There is no explicit sex in the book.
What do you mean? Sorryy.
...and, again recalling his father's memoir about himself as a quiet young man being pushed around by his first boss at a factory, the protagonist announces his resignation and throws his phone out of the train window, since only his father, his boss, his landlord and a pizza delivery place were contacts on there. In Stockholm he discovers his mother's address but sees her leaving the home as he approaches, along with her new partner and what look like his daughter. Her warm and friendly behaviour around the man and his daughter makes the protagonist become nauseous and he has to stop himself from running up and insulting her for being so happy when his father was miserable for so long. Instead he throws a loose stone through the window of the man's home and walks away while neighbors call for him to be arrested. In his father's memoir is a brief mention of the time his father worked onboard a merchant vessel as a young man which he boarded in Stockholm. He wonders how about a man like his father, so reserved, so averse to big cities, so dismissive of foreign cultures and climates, could understand the appeal of a more adventurous life as represented by working on a merchant ship. He asks himself whether his own youth, spent almost in isolation (studying, at work, on the internet or walking the city alone) is likely to lead to an adulthood like his father's, without even the experience of having a loving wife and child. Finally he returns to his hometown, where he had been invited to the wedding of his old friend and his fiancee. He goes to his father's house and puts on his father's best suit, surprised it fits him, then runs down towards the church where the ceremony is soon to begin. Inside he finds people waiting for the bride to arrive, and his old friend turns and sees him and ushers him up to the front, where he replaces the groom's brother as the best man. After the wedding he throws confetti and cheers the married couple as they leave the church. After everyone dissapears back to their homes or to the local bars and hotels, he stands there alone on the steps of the church, covered in confetti, weary with lack of sleep, and smiling with tears rolling down his face.
He's asking how much money you blew living in the cabin
I find it hard to estimate. I just thought of a figure but things here in Norway cost a lot so it's hard to make the figure relative.
But I haven't had to pay rent, only food, transport and upkeep etc.