I Blame It on Gran

I have always enjoyed reading and unabashedly blame that on my gran, a retired school teacher, who signed me up for a library card at the Carnegie Library (a lot of them were named Carnegie in those days). It was love at first sight for me as an impressionable five year old. The touch and feel of the books, their bindings, the feel of the paper, the smell of the older volumes, all added to the experience. Admittedly at five years old, the pictures in the books were more interesting at first.

When Gran taught me to read and write before I was enrolled in kindergarten, I discovered that stories were more than colored pictures on the page. They could sweep their readers away to places they could barely imagine before picking up a bound edition, and I couldn't wait to be swept away.

Reading took over my life at a young age as I went from Dr. Seuss and fairy tales to Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time. To this day, I enjoy time travel stories.

Moving on to mysteries, I went sleuthing with Nancy Drew and Trixie Belden, young mystery-solving teens.

As I grew older and became bored with teen crime solvers, I picked up my first science fiction novels by reading Ray Bradbury's Farenheit 451, Dandelion Wine, and Something Wicked This Way Comes. Andre Norton, Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, and Arthur C. Clarke were next. A fan of the aforementioned science fiction novels, I equally absorbed Dark Shadows, The Outer Limits and Star Trek on television like a black hole singularity.

As a senior in high school, I needed an extra English credit and elected to take a science fiction writing class, never realizing that I would actually enjoy writing stories for the class. I had dabbled in poetry off and on before that but was surprised that I could actually write stories.

I drifted for a while into historical fiction then moved back to science and fantasy fiction. I devoured Terry Brooks' original Shannara trilogy and subsequent novels except for the Landover novels which were well-written but did not draw me in as a reader. Anne McCaffrey's Pern novels were next, and I was drawn into the world of telepathetic dragons and fire lizards. I still have all the Pern novels and occasionally re-read them. After reading Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman's Dragonlance Chronicles, I enjoyed other worlds that they have created as well.

In college, I enrolled in literature and writing classes though I have to admit that I was utterly burned out on Sylvia Plath and Walt Whitman by the end of that time thanks to graduate student instructors who spent nearly the entire semester on having their students analyze and write papers on works by Plath and Whitman to use in their theses. But I digress.

I didn't read J. R. R. Tolkien's The Hobbit or The Lord of the Rings series until I was in my twenties. Though I thought the story was brilliant, the description of every rock and blade of grass along the way bored me to tears.

I discovered fan fiction about eleven years ago and began exploring other worlds writing fics for various fandoms. To date, my favorite mythological creature is the dragon. I have written a few stories about them including a fic in the Dragonriders of Pern universe though haven't posted it on Fanfiction.net due to Anne McCaffrey's restrictions.

The vampire genre has been another inspiration of mine, and I have written fics about more than one vampire mythology though only one of those mythologies is published on Fanfiction.net.

After watching the first episode of True Blood, I purchased Dead Until Dark by Charlaine Harris. I quickly bought the rest of the Southern Vampire Mysteries and the books with her SVM short stories, as well, and read them in a week. Although I like the HBO series, I enjoy the books so much more, and having watched True Blood, I can now visualize Harris' characters and can even hear the actors saying the lines if I reread any of the books.

If you haven't guessed by now, my favorite character from the Southern Vampire Mysteries is Eric Northman. There is just something about a tall, blonde, thousand year old Viking that latches onto a viewer or reader and doesn't let go. It doesn't hurt that Alexander Skarsgård, the actor who portrays Eric Northman, is extremely easy on the eyes.

My fan fiction activities at present are focused on writing stories for the Southern Vampire Mysteries created by Charlaine Harris. I have also started a True Blood-based story called Trust Me which is a re-telling of the end of season two of the series and which moves on to my vision of season three. My SVM fan fiction stories are posted on Fanfiction.net.

I am currently writing a stand-alone mystery and a fantasy series which I hope to have published when completed. I am also a moderator on HBO's True Blood Wiki. [Visit my profile].

Happily Dead Ever After: Becoming Eric Northman

Read Happily Dead Ever After at Fan Fiction.net or EricNorthman.net. If you do not want to be spoiled regarding the story, then stop here. There are a number of spoilers below.

In 2008, I began writing 1,000-year-old Viking, vampire Eric Northman's back story before Charlaine Harris published book 9 in her Southern Vampire Mysteries, "Dead and Gone." I was fascinated by the depth of his character and his many layers in books 1-8 and thought, who was he? Why doesn't he like shifters and weres? Why does he show disdain for witches? What is the story behind his using Leif as his alias? Why doesn't he seek to rule in a higher capacity than sheriff in the vampire hierarchy? Why is he so captivated by telepathic barmaid, Sookie Stackhouse?

Sookie believes that he is Swedish like the actor (Alexander Skarsgård) who portrays him on HBO's loose adaptation of the novels, True Blood. Most of the Vikings were from Norway and Denmark in the Viking age, so after doing some research, I discovered that the history of Eiríkr Haraldsson, heir of King Harald Fairhair (sometimes referred to as Harald Finehair) fit Eric Northman perfectly. Harald was the first king of Norway, and his son Eiríkr was the second king of Norway.

Eiríkr was reported to have killed his many male siblings and earned the nickname Eiríkr Blóðøx (Eric Bloodaxe). He was also twice king of the Viking city of York in Northumberland in the 10th century. Eiríkr's brother Haakon succeeded him as king of Norway, and one of Eiríkr's sons became the fourth king of Norway. "According to the Heimskringla and Egils saga, Eric spent much of his childhood in fosterage with the hersir Thórir son of Hróald. Of his adolescent years, a remarkable picture is painted in Heimskringla, which recounts that Eric, aged twelve and seemingly possessed of prodigious valour and strength, embarked on a career of international piracy."

"The figure which Eric became in the Norse sagas is a heady mix of history, folklore and political propaganda. He is usually portrayed as a larger-than-life Viking hero, whose powerful and violent performances bring him many short-term successes, but ultimately make him flawed and unpopular as a ruler and statesman. The Heimskringla describes Eric as 'a large and handsome man, strong and of great prowess, a great and victorious warrior'."

Eiríkr's consort Gunnhildr, according to the "earliest saga Historia Norwegiæ, is described as the daughter of Gorm inn Gamli ('the Old'), king of Denmark (and hence a sister of Harald Bluetooth)."
[Historical references are from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Bloodaxe]

Although Gunnhildr was reportedly a witch--not a nice one either, I did not wish to alienate practicing witches of today, so for the purposes of the story, she is a sorceress.

Not wanting to completely immerse the Southern Vampire Mysteries' (SVM) readers directly into the Viking age, I decided to tell the story in alternate chapters from the present to the past. Odd numbered chapters are in the familiar SVM realm told in first person by Sookie Stackhouse. Even numbered chapters tell Eric's story from his birth in third person. "Happily Dead Ever After" is also a time travel story in which Sookie is sent back to meet 10th century Eirik. For my sanity, I am spelling Eric's 10th century name as Eirik and his consort's name as Gunnhild, dropping the r's at the end. Eric's sister Ingegjerd is called Inge by her family in the story, even though Inge is currently considered a masculine name in Scandinavia.

To help readers picture the Viking-age characters, here are those I picture as the players so far:

Alexander Skarsgård - Eirik Haraldsson (Eric Bloodaxe, a.k.a Eric Northman)

Top to bottom along the right-hand side of the photo above:
Stellan Skarsgård - Harald Fairhair (King Harald I of Norway, a.k.a Harald Finehair)
Brendan Gleeson as Olaf Haraldsson Geirstadalf, king of Vingulmark, later also Vestfold
Dennis Storhøi as Thørir Hróaldsson
Kristanna Løken as Ingegjerd Haraldsdotter
Gustaf Skarsgård as Per Thørirsson (adult)
Karl Urban as Leif Thørirsson (adult)
Alexander Skarsgård as a very young Eirik
Alicia Witt as Gunnhild, Mother of kings
Charlotte Salt as Hanne (Charlotte's video clip from The Tudors)

I will post more about the Sookie time travel arc at a later date when we get closer to that part of the story.