New Book? New Book!

“Why haven’t you written a new book in so many years?”

I wish I got that question more often, but I guess people are either too embarrassed to ask, or glad that I stopped.

I didn’t stop, though. It’s just been a while. I really love writing books, and if I could, I would write them every day of my life. But life has had different plans for me, apparently.

Let’s back up a little bit.

I made my debut in 2006 with På Y-fronten intet nytt – my satirical analysis of masculinity. To my pleasant surprise, the book was well received, and both readers and publishers wanted me to write more. So I did. Over the next couple of years, I kept writing similar funny-yet-serious books about other subjects, like the environment and relationships. It was fun and exciting, but I also have a restless mind that wants to try new things all the time. It also wanted to write fiction. More specifically, horror. Scary books are, after all, my first and biggest literary love.

I started warming up my writing muscles by writing the short story collection Oktoberoffer, and it was really fun. Then I started crafting the framework and plot for a novel in the same vein. When I talked to my publisher about it, they got very excited and wanted to collaborate with me on it. It was all terribly exciting.

Then life happened.

I call this part of my life “A Series of Unfortunate Events”, or sometimes just the cursed era. What happened? A lot. None of it good. It’s too complicated and personal to start describing in detail, but it took a toll on me, and it never, ever stopped.

I published my last book (Oktoberoffer) in 2013, but after that, life was just one disaster after another. I went from having a life to being in a constant state of survival mode. If there is one thing you need to write, it is a fairly functioning brain. Mine wasn’t functioning at all. At this point, I could barely compose a short shopping list.

When friends asked about it, I tried to explain my state as being like trying to do your taxes while riding a roller coaster. Just too much chaos to focus.

There is also the matter of juggling work and writing. My “daytime job” is also writing. I pay the bills by writing copy and content for clients. Now, I know a lot of journalists and copywriters who write book after book in their spare time. That’s amazing, but I have no idea how they manage it. For me, writing a double shift like that is like pumping iron at the gym all day and then going home to do push-ups for the rest of the evening. It’s just too exhausting.

But then again, I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve been burned out, and by now I am no longer a fully functioning human being. I’m more of an old cell phone – low resolution, slow processing power, and a low battery capacity that runs out quickly and needs to be recharged ten times a day.

When people ask me where I see myself in five years, my honest answer is: hopefully retired or dead. I don’t have a lot of juice left in me anymore.

A lot of excuses, I know, but this is why I haven’t written any new books since 2013. I’ve really wanted to, but you can’t drive anywhere with an empty tank.

But.

Life has changed. The series of unfortunate events has (mostly) stopped (not counting 2025, which was a really shitty year). My new life in Chile is slowly healing me, and I can feel my brain coming back together piece by piece. I’m regaining my energy and my focus, even if it is a slow process.

There is also a better work-life balance “thanks” to AI stealing most of the writing gigs. This has led to me feeling less like a burnt-out has-been mess barely capable of existing than I have felt in more than a decade.

And now I’m writing a book again.

What kind of book?

Well, over the years, a lot of people have asked me why I’m not translating any of my old books for other markets. The simplest answer to that question is that this is usually up to agents and publishers, because it involves a lot of work and resources. It is simply out of the author’s hands.

That being said, I was going through my old work and realised that I felt confident enough to tackle this work myself now. But I don’t feel like just translating something. It’s been more than 20 years since I wrote my first book, and I have so many new ideas. Especially when I look at the world right now.

So, I have used some old book ideas as a framework and added a lot of new ideas to it. A bit like a soft reboot of a franchise.

What is the theme? I’m not telling just yet. It is something that I have tackled before, and that I feel is very, very relevant right now. It is easy and fun to write about, and the process feels very exciting.

My plan is to have a finished draft by the end of this year, but knowing how life works, we’ll probably be invaded by aliens by then, or Armageddon will happen. But if not, a new book from Peter X. Eriksson is on the way. This time in English.

For anyone wondering why I haven’t written any new books: I’m terribly sorry. Life was just too much. Good news: I’m writing again. New book is on the way.

Stay tuned for more updates!