Category Archives: More Than Anything

More Than Anything has been nominated in the Best Coming of Age category on the MM Romance Group’s Members Choice Awards. I didn’t even realise until I was going through all the polls casting my own votes and there it was, instantly catching my eye. I’m so incredibly happy someone nominated it! <3

If you’re a member of GoodReads and the MM Romance Group, you can go here to vote on the poll. You don’t have to vote for More Than Anything (there’s loads of good books on there), but I’d be very happy if you did. I’m so excited to see how it does once the results are revealed in January!

Another blog post about four chapters at the same time. What can I say? They flowed so nicely. I was starting chapter seventeen and suddenly I was finishing chapter twenty. I wrote 20K in four days. I was on fire, the story was on fire, the characters were dying to reach the end of their story.

They still aren’t done, there’s lots more to happen to them in the future. But those tales will be reserved for short stories. Maybe even a novella?

I love the last four chapters. They came so easily and everything was wrapped up with a nice little bow. Not literally, but you know, it went smoothly. It’s a bit sad to leave these two, but they’ve had their story now. Besides, it’s not like I won’t visit them later, in oneshots. Because you can bet there’ll be lots of oneshots about these two! They have so much more to tell.

These chapters were extremely easy to write. They flowed so nicely, which is why I wrote 4 chapters before writing another blog post about them. The first two chapters were from Jørgen’s POV, and they headed off in a direction that was not planned at all, but that actually worked great with the story and him as a character. It shows how deep down in that black hole he is, and what the consequences is for doing something that he hadn’t really meant to do.

Jørgen’s closest family is introduced, and Jørgen grows close with someone else. They have a lot of things in common, and Jørgen finally manages to open up a bit more than he has so far in the story.

The last two chapters are from Geir’s POV. He got some bad news again, and it once again drives a wedge between him and his dad. His chapters went basically as planned, and they came just as easily as Jørgen’s chapters did.

I think I wrote these four chapters in the time-span of about a week or so. With chapter sixteen finished, there’s only four more chapters left, before the novel wraps up.

These two chapters came easily. Some surprises happened, with scenes not planned, such as a very nice father-son moment in the beginning. It might just be one of my favourite scenes in the story so far, silly because it happened so unexpectedly, but fit so perfectly. One plan fell through, but it works out for the better, lest too many characters be introduced at once, which is not a good thing.

There is very little of Jørgen in these two chapters, so they’re not as riddled with his deep-rooted and heavy issues. These two chapters are Geir’s through and through and more hopeful in tone as to his life. He’s still only seventeen though, and though he doesn’t hate his new life as much as he could’ve, he’s still young and he can fly off the handle in a second, which was demonstrated once with his Dad here. Another father-son scene I’m quite fond off.

One of my favourite characters is introduced here. He’s also one of my most feminine and out there characters ever. He speaks his mind, is not afraid to show who he is, which I guess is what I like about him.

These chapters were easy to write. I think I only wrote the 10K in 4-5 days. The next part is Jørgen’s, which will be filled with a lot more angst than these two, considering Jørgen is now starting to finally deal with his issues.

This is where it starts go downhill. Geir got some news he did not consider good in the last chapter, and in chapter 9 he gets quite a knockdown. I can’t say anything else without spoiling, but these two chapters have been very sad to write. They’ve also been hard to write, because not only was there one really sad thing happening, but there were two.

These two chapters were supposed to wrap up the first arc of the novel, but the more I wrote, the more the word count rose, the more worried I got. This is going to be too long, I kept thinking, I’m not going to be able to wrap it up. This chapter is longer than any of the others, but at least it’s all wrapped up and ready to be taken into the second arc.

It was essential to end the arc in chapter ten, because the locations change drastically in the next chapter. There weren’t enough story to do two additional chapters, and I also needed for the last chapter in this arc to be from Jørgen’s POV. Geir’s the one who’s location changes from next chapter on, so he needed to start off the next arc.

The first arc of the story is about realising your feelings, about falling slowly in love with someone, yet also knowing that your issues are keeping you back. The second arc will dig deeper into Jørgen’s psyche and how his family fit into it all, while Geir will have to come to terms with his new life. He has to grow up, become more confident in himself and make new friends.

The second arc was planned on not being as long as the first, considering the first one took up about half the planned word count. Some things changed in the last chapter though, something I had not counted on. There might not be a third arc, because the second arc might just cover it all anyway.

The new changes doesn’t change the story particularly, there’s just more happening than what was originally planned. The ending result will be the same though—and it’ll be a good one.

I started writing More Than Anything back in March of 2013. I wrote part of the first chapter before the Big Writer’s Block happened and I started working and being sociable. In shorter words; before I went AWOL all summer. I wrote half the first chapter at that time, and this was when the story was supposed to be told from only Jørgen’s POV.

After the four+ months I was AWOL, the characters started coming back to me. They revealed the fact that this couldn’t be told from only Jørgen’s POV, because Geir had a lot of story to tell as well. This is when I decided to switch POV every 10K. I divided the 10Ks into two chapter of 5K, to break it up. This is still the same, but now every 10K section is also a part. Jørgen’s first two chapters are part one, Geir’s next two chapters are part two, etc.

The story unfolded before me. I’ve known these character for so many years, and I know their stories. Still, some things have changed in this new version and I am happy about it. It makes the story better and more realistic, in my opinion. For instance, in the original almost all secondary characters were either gay or bisexual. I think I only had one straight couple, and the girlfriend went lesbian after a while, while the boyfriend hooked up with another girl. Where’s the realism in that?

The characters changed and evolved in my head. They’re living in a small town, so now most secondary character are actually straight.  It wasn’t hard to change this, it happened naturally. They haven’t come into play much yet at this point in the story, because Jørgen is a recluse and Geir doesn’t have any friends, but they’ll play a bigger part once the second arc starts.

Chapters 1-8 make up most of the first arc. This arc moves extremely slow, as Jørgen and Geir get to know each other. The writing went smoothly, because the scenes were laid out there and all I had to do was write them down. And all they have to do is contribute to the dialogue. They don’t jump right into bed, and they won’t, because their issues are so much greater than that and they need to work them out before their relationship can even think about progress.

The first arc is, for me, about them discovering that they can have happiness and they can have love and a relationship. They don’t quite know how to go about it, especially not with all the issues in the way. But they’re young and they’re trying their best. They’re taking it slow. As they should. 

Less Than Three Press
ISBN: 9781620044292
Genre: contemporary m/m
Wordcount: 100,000
Release date: September 24th, 2014

Book 1 in the More Than Anything series

Arriving home after work one evening, Jørgen sees a young man who looks adrift and out of place—and who promptly has a seizure on the sidewalk. Jørgen takes care of him until the seizure passes and then, not knowing who to contact, takes care of him for the night. After giving the kid, Geir, a ride home the next morning, he expects that to be the end of it. He doesn’t expect Geir to be a student at the vocational school where Jørgen works as an electrician. He definitely does not expect to be drawn to Geir time and again, to want things that will never be possible for two people with more obstacles between them than can ever be overcome.

It’s only two days left until More Than Anything is released. I’m sitting her equal parts excited and biting my nails in anxiety. This is THE book. The longest book I’ve ever written; the longest in the making as Jørgen and Geir were the second gay couple to ever come to me, almost ten years ago now; the book I’m the most proud of out of every single other story I’ve ever written. If people doesn’t like this one, then I might just give up, because this is my masterpiece.

Okay, a bit of an overstatement there, but truly. These characters have been with me for so damn long! They were supposed to be dead and buried, and had been for a couple years, until they rose from their graves and dusted each other off last year. They came back with a vengeance.

So I wrote their story. I had planned it to come in around 50K, perhaps. I certainly couldn’t have more story than that. I’d never written anything longer before in my life. (Well, okay, I have, but in Norwegian, so not in my English writing career.) Then the first part, told from Jørgen’s POV ended up an astounding 10K. And then the second part, told from Geir’s POV, also ended up around 10K. And off they went, switching POV for every part. And it ended up at ten. TEN parts. 100K words!

I had plans for this and that to happen, and they thwarted me on some and others followed the outline smoothly. Smooth. That’s the word I’ll use for the writing of this novel. Everything flowed smoothly, I wrote like a fiend. Half of it in October, the rest in November. I did nothing but write last November, finishing this novel as well as writing the entire sequel to it (different characters, who happens to be the first ever gay couple that came to me).

What a ride it’s been. It was fun. It was finally done right. I’ve got more documents of older versions than I can count, and let me tell you… they’re not alike at all. With this novel, these characters, I feel like I’ve grown as a writer. This is the standard I will now compare newer works too. This is THE book. The one I’m proudest of. My baby. And I really hope people like it.