It’s always a pleasure when I can introduce you to
a new-to-me author and their latest release. Today I’m delighted to welcome
author Samuel Bjørk to Thoughts in Progress to talk about his writing and
latest release, I’M TRAVELING ALONE.
The book is an international hit and makes its US
debut, as well as launches a propulsive new crime series, tomorrow (Tuesday, February
23) from Viking. I’M TRAVELING ALONE
is a global success with rights purchased by 30 countries to date,
including recently the UK. It received Starred Reviews from both Booklist
and Library Journal, and author Samuel Bjørk is repeatedly compared to
Jo Nesbø.
Thanks to the lovely Catherine and the wonderful
folks at Viking/Penguin, I have a print copy of the book to giveaway. Please
see the end of the post for more details.
Here’s a brief synopsis of I’M TRAVELING ALONE:
One morning in the Norwegian countryside, a six-year-old girl
is found hanging lifeless from a tree. She is dressed in doll’s clothes and
around her neck is an airline tag that reads, “I’m traveling alone.” This
harrowing scene prompts a special homicide unit in Oslo to re-open and reunite
veteran police investigators Holger Munch and Mia Krüger. A number “1” is
discovered on the fingernail of the dead girl—this is just the beginning. Is
the killer connected to the unsolved abduction of an infant girl six years
prior, or perhaps with the reclusive Christian sect living in the nearby woods?
Is this revenge—and for what? I’M TRAVELING ALONE will keep readers
guessing until its explosive conclusion.
Here is an interview with the author Samuel Bjørk that
was originally made by German publisher Goldmann.
You are a novelist, playwright, visual artist,
songwriter, singer and musician. Could you tell us a little bit more about your
variety of engagements and about how you started writing stage plays and
novels?
Bjørk:
I grew up in a small town in the middle of Norway
with not too much to do. When I was 15 someone started a theatre group for
teenagers. I joined, and soon realized that I really loved working with the
fictional world. I felt it was almost like a fairytale place where you could
run off from reality, and be and do pretty much whatever you wanted. I wrote my
first songs there, and my first all-night play there. One thing just led to
another: I got a record contract, I got my first novel published, I wrote
TV-series and plays for the national stage. I always tried to have fun, and
just never stopped working.
I’M TRAVELING ALONE is your debut thriller. It has caused a stir in Scandinavia,
has been reviewed enthusiastically and the publication rights have been sold to
22 countries. What fascinated you about writing a thriller after having
successfully published the two novels Pepsi
Love and Speed for Breakfast in
Norway?
Bjørk:
What fascinated me most about the thriller-genre
was the fast pace of it all. I have always been the kind of a person who never
could sit still and I get bored very easily, so I wanted to try to write
something where the excitement never ended, always kept going, one twist after
the other. I wanted to write a project that ended up being something that you
couldn’t put down or stop reading, and when finished with it you just wanted to
read another one.
In I’M TRAVELING ALONE, police investigate
a series of murders. The victims are six-year-old children looking forward to
their first day of school. You took a risk with a delicate subject, as writing
about child murder is a balancing act: readers might easily be overwhelmed or
disturbed. Do you share these concerns and if so, did they influence your
writing in any way?
Bjørk:
In all my projects I try to be as “true” as
possible. That means I try not to work on projects that are too constructed,
cruel, or written just to amuse people. When this story came to me, I was
terrified in the beginning – I actually had to get up and turn on the lights in
my apartment. I decided it needed to be written anyway, and then I of course
tried to do it as gently as possible. Not one single act of violence is
described in detail in this novel, and that was a choice I made very early on.
Pressure on
the police is high to find the murderer as soon as possible. Two of the best
investigators are appointed: Holger Munch, a corpulent inspector in his
mid-fifties with the highest success rate among chief inspectors, and famous
Mia Krüger whose instinct is infallible. Despite her ingenious investigative
skills, Mia has quit police service and is now, in the beginning of her
thirties, dealing with a personal crisis. Could you tell us something about
these main characters and about their relationship?
Bjørk:
It’s a bit funny because when I came up with the
story – the plot – none of these characters existed. But I felt that the story
was so gruesome and terrifying that I needed the best investigators ever, to be
sure this murderer was caught. Mia came to me alone on an island, where she had
hidden herself from society and decided to end her own life. She had lost her
whole family, including her twin sister Sigrid to a heroin-overdose. Holger
Munch is Mia’s opposite in a way, an intelligent but much calmer man, and the
two of them have had a very close relationship in the past. Munch had recently
lost his job, and the case brings them back together, which turns out to be a
very good thing for the both of them.
Gabriel Mørk
is an important member of Holger Munch´s team: He is a young computer nerd and
hacker and has just started working in the homicide division. How does the
story benefit from telling part of it from Mørk´s point of view?
Bjørk:
I love this character, and telling some of the
story from his point of view was very important. Gabriel in a way becomes you,
the reader, because he has never been a police investigator, has never worked
on any cases, and so looking through his eyes it is almost as though you enter
the investigator’s world yourself. He asks all the questions and thinks how you
might think, if you where put in the same position. I felt using Gabriel’s
voice brought the story come closer to you, the reader, than it would have
otherwise.
Could you
tell us some details about your research, for example how you made yourself
familiar with police work and psychological profiling?
Bjørk:
When it comes to the police work I just tried to
remember everything I had ever read, books from real cases, and crime novels,
or what I had seen on films and in TV-series, and then work from there.
Regarding the psychological profiling, I did no research at all. I just tried
to be Mia Krüger and do and think as she would. It was pretty scary at times,
but I think it worked out quite well.
I’M TRAVELING ALONE impresses with well-conceived scene changes. Settings, rooms,
objects and especially the places where the corpses are found are charged with
symbolic meaning. Would you agree that your thriller is influenced by your work
as a playwright in these aspects?
Bjørk:
I think this novel is influenced by everything
I’ve ever done – my plays, my novels, and also the lyrics I’ve written for my
music. I’ve always tried to put an extra layer of meaning behind everything,
trying to create images that would be colorful, symbolic and very visual, to
give the reader the best experience possible every step of the way.
The closer
Mia comes to solving the murders, the more she is confronted with her own past.
Did you always plan for Mia´s own tragic history to be this essential to the
whole plot?
Bjørk:
To be honest, no. The plot and the story came
first, and Mia’s character and story came later. But as I started writing, it
became more and more clear to me that these two were interwoven in a way that I
hadn’t planned at all. I knew who the murderer was but I actually had no idea
that Mia was so involved as she turned out to be. At several points while
writing the novel, I tried to write as fast as I could, I often stayed up for
days, because I myself was very exited to know what was going to happen next.
In the end, when the murderer confronts Mia with the real truth, I actually had
no idea this was going to happen, or how all the pieces of the stories were so
interconnected, before I wrote it.
You give an
exact description of the psychological condition and inner development of your
main characters. How important is the series of murders and solving them (or
crime in general) for the characterization of your protagonists?
Bjørk:
I have thought of this myself, and I think it’s a
very difficult question to answer. The characters to me are so rich and
interesting that one might think that writing about them without the crimes
surrounding them would be possible, but then again, why not have it both ways?
I think the combination of their psychological condition and inner life, and
the crimes, is sort of the perfect way to get to know, and enjoy these
characters.
Even the
psychological condition of your minor characters is precisely characterized. Focusing
on the lives of young children, you show what kind of experiences might cause
emotional damage or mental disorders. Does your thriller convey some sort of
social criticism in this aspect?
Bjørk:
The answer to that is a definitive yes. Before I
started to write this novel, which is my first genre-novel, I decided that I
wouldn’t do it if I couldn’t also in some way portray my views on society in
it.
Among the
internationally acclaimed and successful contemporary crime novelists there are
Scandinavians like Håkan Nesser and Jo Nesbø. Do you consider your thriller to
be part of a literary tradition in this genre?
Bjørk:
I think so, yes, this novel has a lot of the same
dark-noir feeling that Scandinavian crime-writers are known for. When that is
said, I wanted to give it something extra, try to do something new, maybe go
psychologically deeper, and involve social criticism in a way that would maybe
make it in part a literary novel, as well as a thriller.
I’M TRAVELING ALONE is the first volume of a planned series about the investigator
duo Holger Munch and Mia Krüger. Could you tell us a little about the second
thriller and what you are currently working on?
Bjørk:
I am currently writing the second thriller, deep
in it at the moment actually, trying to get the characters to do what I want
them to do, which is not always easy because they always seem to want to go
their own way. Holger Munch is still trying to get over his ex-wife. Mia is out
on suspension, needing a psychiatrist’s evaluation before she is allowed back
to work. Then a seventeen-year-old girl is found naked in the woods, laid out
on a bed of feathers, surrounded by a pentagram of lights, with a white flower
in her mouth. I think that is all I want to say about that, for now…
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
 |
| Author Samuel Bjørk - credit Harald Øren |
Samuel Bjørk is the pen name of Norwegian
novelist, playwright and singer/songwriter Frode Sander Øien. Øien wrote his
first stage play at the age of twenty-one and has since written two highly
acclaimed novels, released six albums, written five more plays, and translated
Shakespeare, all in his native Norway.
Øien currently lives and works in Oslo. I’M
TRAVELING ALONE is his American debut.
GIVEAWAY
DETAILS:
Thanks to the wonderful folks at Viking/Penguin, this
giveaway is for one print copy of I’M
TRAVELING ALONE by Samuel Bjørk. The giveaway is open to residents of the
U.S. only and will end at 12 a.m. (EST) on Tuesday, March 1.
To enter the giveaway, just click on the
Rafflecopter widget below and follow the instructions. The widget may take a
few seconds to load so please be patient. A winner will be selected by the
Rafflecopter widget and I’ll send an email with the subject line “Thoughts in Progress I’m Traveling Alone Giveaway.”
The winner will have 72 hours to replay to the email or another winner will be
selected. PLEASE be sure to check
your spam folder from time to time after the giveaway ends to make sure the
notification email doesn’t end up there. If you win and you’ve already won the
book somewhere else or you just decided for whatever reason you don’t want to
win (which is fine), once again PLEASE
let me know.
Thanks so much for stopping by today. Do you enjoy
reading books by authors from other countries? Are you a fan of Scandinavian
crime thrillers?
a Rafflecopter giveaway
Author J.D. Robb makes the base plot in BROTHERHOOD IN DEATH
riveting even though it’s a formula that has been used by writers in various
ways over the years.
