A Viking novel of faith, and forgiveness.
Audience: ages 15 and up (due to graphic imagery and complex topics and themes)
Genre: Historical Fiction, Christian Fiction
Setting: early 1000’s Scandinavia
Length: 88,805 words, 25 chapters
The first time she’d come here, Father had taken her up the hill and showed her the tree, the ocean, the sky, and the woods around her.
“I came here as a boy, Astrid, whenever things weighed on my mind,” Father’d said with a sober smile. His gave left the rolling waves and rested on her. He held her tight. “Now I’m showing you. And remember that, no matter what, I’ll always be here for you. Your mother, Sven, and I will never leave you.”
That was the first time, and this was the last.
***
Astrid Arnoldsdatter wasn’t interested in Christianity–that is, until her brother Sven returns from a raid and tells of his encounter with a Christian monk. Fearing they’d incur the Norse gods’ wrath, Astrid tries to put the interest out of mind and urges Sven to do the same.
So when Danes raid her village, Astrid is conscience-stricken, blaming herself and believing she’d been cursed and forsaken by the gods. Alone, she flees to a nearby island where opposition, attacks, and illness repeatedly drive her to call on the Christian God because, why waste time calling on gods who’d forsaken her? Eventually, she learns to rely on her newfound faith in God. But when the chance comes to silence her conscience by avenging her family, she overlooks an important characteristic of that faith: forgiveness.
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Inspiration
At the time I wrote Out of the Dark, I was imagining my own How to Train Your Dragon: Race to the Edge episodes before going to sleep at night. This is what first got me interested in Vikings and their culture. In 2019, one of my aunts gave me a beautiful zipper-closure notebook for Christmas and I wanted to do something special with it, soon deciding, why not write my own Viking book? I knew next to nothing about writing, but I did it anyway, finishing the first draft late at night on the 4th of July, 2020. It took a lot of work to get it from the 33K, historical fantasy that it first was, but the process was worth it.
Writing and Editing
When I wrote this book at 14, I had no idea what I was doing or how to do it. I just came up with scenes as needed, meandered through the middle, and came to a melodramatic conclusion. Needless to say, the book wasn’t very cohesive. As with writing the book, editing was also an experiment. However, several years had passed, I’d written several more books, and I had some writing resources, so I was more prepared this time. Even so, editing took two-and-a-half years.
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