Today, December 3, 2019, marks the official worldwide release date for “The Voyage” – almost two years to the day since I opened up a new Microsoft Word document and wrote the very first sentence on December 1, 2017. The road to completion has been long and winding… I would like to say that it was a piece of cake, but it was not so.

I finished the script on February 25th, 2018 – I wrote it in my native language, Swedish. My first book script ever – and I completed it in just three months (which in hindsight was a bit too quick – no wonder publishers gave me the cold shoulder, it was riddled with sloppy writing flaws. Although I think the clincher was ultimately that the Swedish publishers lacked the courage to take such an explosive story under their wings.). I sent it to nearly every major Swedish publishing house there was – but they all turned me down, one after the other. Some gave me automated rejection replies, while others responded that it was “close” and that I “nearly made the cut”. But – they all turned me down, which is a pretty devastating blow. So I gave up on the entire writing project and nearly convinced myself that it was completely dead in the water, for about six months or so. I was crestfallen.

But then I thought… what if I re-wrote the script to English? Surely, there has to be interest out there somewhere. And maybe, just maybe, the American/English/Canadian etc publishers would have more guts than the Swedish ones to gamble on such a controversial story. I finally finished the re-write in January this year, and sent it out far and wide – and finally, they were interested. Jess from Mascot Books contacted me in February this year, a whole year after I had completed the book in Swedish, and I nearly fell off my chair – it was truly surreal, to realize that what had been a dead script for so long was now coming to life. I settled with Mascot and have been partnering with them since March, and will hopefully continue to do so for many years to come.

The flat Earth theory. Is there a topic more controversial and unanimously hated? No, there is not. Everyone has a hot take on it; some (most) dismiss it as an ancient myth that died thousands of years ago. Some are certain that it is the truth. And some are on the fence, or uncertain to the degree that they are now “agnostic” on their view of the shape of the Earth. But there is one thing that every single person in the world will agree on when it comes to this topic… if people are honest to themselves deep down. One thing, and one thing only: that it is one hell of an intriguing concept.

How could one not be enthralled by the idea that this place we live in may be not what we have been taught that it is, our whole lives? That said, the fact that it is the most polarizing topic barring none made it a challenging thing to tackle indeed. It’s a double-edged sword – I figured that if I could make it work, it could turn out to be a truly epic tale that would resonate and be cherished by millions of readers worldwide. But to slip up, just by a hair… the vultures would flock and tear it to pieces, and the end result could turn out to be an unbridled dumpster fire. It is a premise most volatile, dare I say the most volatile storyline ever conceived. I told myself when I first ran across this about three years ago that I would stay far away from it and not touch it with a ten-foot pole. Yeah… that didn’t exactly pan out, did it!

I’d like to think that I succeeded… and now you can all make up your own minds on whether or not that is the case – since from today onwards it is officially out on Amazon, Target, Barnes & Noble, Books-a-Million, ecampus.com, Bookdepository.com, Adlibris, Akademibokhandeln and many other platforms and bookstores!