Stark Reflections on Writing and Publishing

EP 292 - Learning by Doing and Baptism by Pyromancy with Oskar Söderberg

Feb 24, 2023

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Mark interviews Oskar Söderberg, a thirty-five year old husband, father of two, and full-time IT employee about his writing life and the process leading up to publishing his debut novel, The Broken Pyromancer, coming in March 2023.

Prior to the main segment, Mark reads comments from recent episodes, shares a personal update, and a few words about this episode's sponsor.

You can learn more about how you can get your audiobooks distributed to retailers and library systems around the world at starkreflections.ca/Findaway.

During their chat, Mark and Oskar talk about:

Oksar's long-held perspective of how cool writers were, with the romanticized images he always had
Writing and self-publishing a book back in 2017, which did not work out well, and which he ended up taking down
His main takeaway from that experience
His first novel, which is with an editor as the interview was being conducted and is coming out in 2023
What the Sweden Amazon site is like
How Kindle Unlimited is not available in Sweden
What platforms are not available to authors in Sweden
The different genre Oskar is writing in for this new book
Teaching himself programming in order to build a game for IOS and Android that is like a "choose your own adventure" interactive horror adventure (Gray Sojourn: Wandering Souls)
Learning more about the world of self-publishing from listening to a number of podcasts (especially The 6 Figure Author Podcast)
The expected/planned release date of the new novel, entitled The Broken Pyromancer
Why Oskar decided to publish his books wide, and his understanding that the process can take a lot of time
A look at the similarities and differences of advice for an author from Sweden versus an author in the US
How eBooks aren't really a thing for readers in Sweden
Oksar being the only person he knows who owns an eBook reader
The popularity of audiobook apps and platforms like Storytel
Oskar's learning about the reader magnet process and how it helped him go through the process and learning all the pieces of it, including testing the waters
The proliferation of rookie mistakes that are so easy to find, despite all the great content, information, and resources for writers

After the interview, Mark reflects on a few things Oskar mentioned and thanks Patrons of the podcast.

Links of Interest:

Working full time in IT, Oksar Söderberg is a 35 year old father of two tiny terrorizing girls trying to squeeze enough time in to become an author by any means necessary’s. He is a reader, writer, and lover of fantasy (and some horror), with debut novel, The Broken Pyromancer, coming early 2023. Stay tuned!

The introductory, end, and bumper music for this podcast (“Laser Groove”) was composed and produced by Kevin MacLeod of www.incompetech.com and is Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0