This year, the Book Bloggers' Novel of the Year Award (BBNYA) is celebrating the 65 books that made it into Round Two with a mini spotlight blitz tour for each title. BBNYA is a yearly competition where book bloggers from all over the world read and score books written by indie authors, ending with 10 finalists and one overall winner.
If you want some more
information about BBNYA, check out the BBNYA Website or
take a peek over on Twitter. BBNYA is brought to you in association
with the Folio Society (if you love beautiful books, you NEED to check out
their website!) and the book blogger support group The Write Reads.
The Vikings want the
village. The gods want the souls. Can Tor save his family before everything
goes to Hella?
With one son preparing
for marriage, the other about to have his soul ring painfully cut from his
chest, things were finally looking up for Tor and his family. He was even
thinking of ways to fix his own marriage with the boys’ stepmother. But when a
weather-worn dragon ship washed into his hidden fjord with a half-dead Viking
giant, a Christian slave girl, and members of Tor’s old crew, the life he’d
made began to unravel.
Once, Tor had traded his
own cracked and mottled soul for glory—but he wanted better for his sons. But
even they could be lured by the Viking’s promises of adventure and riches,
compared to their life of want and runaway goats. Only Tor knows that if he
can’t defeat the giant, he and his family might be the village’s first
sacrifice to the gods he left behind.
Viking Lost is the first
novel in the exciting Saga of Souls historical fantasy series. If you like
Norse Mythology, soul-less Vikings, and want a glimpse of the underworld, read
Viking Lost!
Derek Nelsen was born in
New Jersey and raised in North Carolina.
A second generation Norwegian American, his grandparents emigrated to
the US, settling in Norwegian neighborhoods in New York.
Within a generation
these wonderful people left NY to find a better life for their families in the
country. New Jersey, the Garden State.
Kids grow, neighborhoods
change, and slopes are slippery. To protect their four boys from inevitable
incarceration, the next generation moved south. Back when calling long distance
cost money, before overnight delivery, and when flying home was not an option,
Derek’s mother and father left friends and family behind to escape to beautiful
Western North Carolina.
Derek graduated from
Western Carolina University with a bachelor’s degree in Engineering and a
couple of minors (not related to writing). His career afforded him the chance
to get paid to travel and see the world. For over twenty years he used the time
traveling to project sites to rediscover his love of story.
Weary of the radio
always playing the same songs, sports, and politics, Derek remembers making a
conscious effort to turn off the noise (well, most of the time).
On his way to becoming
an airline million miler, every time Derek was in a car, waiting in an airport
or flying on a plane, he was reading or listening to audiobooks or podcasts.
How else could a modern man claim to have read Crime and Punishment? For the
first time he studied the Bible and religion, read philosophers and
storytellers, and discovered a new love of History and Science, too.
Derek’s favorite
non-fiction stories have a nautical bent, and include Nathaniel Philbrick’s ‘In
the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex’ and Alfred Lansing’s
‘Endurance: Shackelton’s Incredible Voyage’. His favorite fiction authors range
from Michael Crichton to George R.R. Martin, with a special love of the
masters, Inklings C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien. Recognizing the ties to Epic
Fantasy, Derek began delving deep into his Norwegian heritage, reading the
Scandinavian Sagas, Myth and Folklore.
It was these master story tellers and epic sagas that lead Derek to discover his own love of creative writing. In 2014, Derek was compelled to write his first Epic Fantasy novel ‘Viking Lost’, the first in his ‘Saga of Souls’ series. Writing these books it turns out, was something he’d been preparing for his entire life.
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