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These introspections – an inward look at the reasons for spending years developing a fiction project that breaks all the norms – explains why I wrote the project, my motivations and what it is all about.

I’m usually quite a private person, but since this project has taken so much time and effort to get here, I decided it’s time to open the doors a little on why I dedicated myself to it in the first place. … and why it took ten years in the making.

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Story construction

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Most books are constructed around presenting the reader with a lead character to identify with emotionally and intellectually through thick and thin. However, while suitable for a single book, this is limiting for a series with focus on relations and multiple points of view such as we know from fantasy (TLOTR, Song Of Ice and Fire) Science Fiction (Dune series), Conspiracy Thriller (X-Files), Thriller (Ludlam’s Bourne trilogy, Larsson’s Millennium trilogy), that each in their own way introduces different sub-plots as semi-independent stories, adding layers of complexity, the series gaining momentum by how it is navigated as the threads are submersed within then navigated, following each and the developing connections as the sub-plots evolve.

Each book will produce the reasons for what happened in the previous book, as a book-to-book process of discovery, back-projected into each chronological piece in a very large and very complex puzzle… During the course of the story, the reader puts the pieces of the story mosaic together as a search for truth. As the elements are combined, the true nature of the back story is revealed, revealing a bridge spanning two previously separate worlds – the true historical-archaeological world of revelation and the false world of deception. The bridge itself and the key to unlocking that bridge is only revealed at the end of the series resolving all story threads across all the timelines, revealing through their combination the back story and historical relevance with a subtle paranormal twist.

As a journey through place and time the series covers scenes based in London, Copenhagen, Rome, Berlin, Denmark, the Baltic region, the hinterland of Sweden, Istanbul, Switzerland and Eastern block Rumania, and is far removed from the worlds of John Le Carré or Ian Flemming. So while The Elements series transcends the deeds, mysteries and conflicts of the most devastating century in the history of mankind, it does so by working with different sub-plots and timelines linking real and fictitious events. The result is a multi-layered universe submerging the reader into a complex world of intrigue and discovery at a time near to the end of the cold war. 

The result will, I hope, be a series where the stories and timelines possess the depth and breadth of vision of epic fantasy, but populated by archaeological discovery, Nordic mythology, the fight for freedom and the past deeds of forgotten heroes to add a thematic vitality to make it unique.

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