Author: alexmstein

The book is live on Amazon, available worldwide in paperback or Kindle format (audiobook to come later).

It’s 42 new, original modern myths and stories. Featuring the Triptych of Death, the ancient gods, why the stars are annoyed with you, the origin of the Moon, Memory, Music, the Hidden People, the Aurora Borealis, the Land of Dreams, and much more…

Click here to purchase.

Here’s the Cover image for the Kindle edition:

And here’s the cover image for the paperback:

You might get the book totally finished and out into the world if you’d stop adding chapters at some point.

Even if the chapters are short. And deal with the God of Procrastination.

Well, it looks like the book won’t be out by September 1st.

I severely underestimated the amount of time and effort it would take to finish the last five percent and get everything ready, but I’m hoping for something like September 15 or so.

But it’s coming. I promise it’s coming.

Meanwhile over on Facebook, I’m sharing a new photo from Iceland every day that I don’t think I’ve shared before. And will keep doing that every day until the book is finally available.

It’s 86 degrees in Los Angeles as I write this.

Even here, relatively close to the coast it feels too hot. My friends who are further inland are sweating under temperatures that are in the 90s or well over 100.

It’s been pretty hot the past couple weeks and isn’t forecast to cool down for the next several.

I mean, at least we don’t have the type of humidity they have on the east coast where I grew up.

The point I’m trying to make is it’s miserable.

But it’s the middle of summer. That’s what happens in the middle of summer, right?

Well. Um. Here’s what happened when I checked the weather in Stöðvarfjörður, Iceland:

When I was there in November, it was mostly in the mid to high 30s.

Frankly, from where I sit in the 86-degree heat, this sounds like Heaven. (Which makes sense, since it’s Iceland.)

Sneak peak. Keep this between us, okay?

Originally, I thought the stickers should be oval, but I’m kind of digging it as a rectangle.

The volcano that was threatening to erupt all through November has erupted a bunch of times.

I’ve been watching it live on YouTube every time there’s a new eruption.

There have been some truly amazing photos, including this one from the Associated Press:

I’m extremely glad it didn’t erupt while I was there, although it seems to have had minimal impact on travel.

I was also about 400 miles from the volcano, so it was never likely to have a huge impact on me except when I was flying home.

I’m struck by the fact that they keep reopening the Blue Lagoon (which is incredibly close to the eruption site and could be overcome by lava within a matter of three or four minutes). While I loved the Blue Lagoon on my first few trips to Iceland, it is incredibly expensive and very touristy. There are other, safer public places to go (including local pools that are thermal-heated, relatively cheap, and really wonderful).

I guess I was lucky to have gone to Iceland for the first time before it became overrun with tourists and became a trendier place. Maybe that’s why I like spending time outside of Reykjavik (which is a nice and very pleasant city, but maybe should be viewed as a gateway to the “real Iceland”).

The volcano does remind me that we live in a world that is constantly changing and bubbling and boiling and cooling… and expecting it not to change is foolish at best.

Earlier this month, I got Covid for the first time. I’d really hoped to be one of those unicorns that never got it (or maybe had some kind of weird immunity), but it got me despite my vigilance and despite the fact that I still wear masks when I’m inside with other people. Luckily, it was short-lived and not very severe (I’ve had colds that were worse).

More soon.

I ordered some sample stickers from Sticker Yeti and they look pretty great.

Colors look wonderful. The size of the type is too small though (which is my fault because I added that in and didn’t bump up the size enough).

I’m glad I found this out before I’d ordered hundreds of stickers.

Back to the drawing board and getting some new samples in a couple weeks.

A friend of mine just gave me a great tagline for the Echoes of Iceland book (and permission to use said tagline). So… I’ve decided to make some stickers with the cover photo and the tagline that I want to have available before the book comes out.

When I asked friends who’ve made stickers in the past, they all pointed me towards one company that seems to have really good quality and reasonable prices.

But it turns out that the guy who runs (and maybe owns) the company has some pretty fascistic views and funnels a lot of his money into supporting far-right causes. And I just can’t get behind that.

The search for a good sticker company goes on…

One of the things I’d always planned for Echoes of Iceland was to turn some of the stories into short films.

Recently, I was asked if I’d like to submit a short film for the latest version of the One Young Punk Festival, an online festival put together by Richard Wilkins and his son Rod (two wonderful folks who were at Frank Turner’s Lost Evenings Festival in Anaheim last September). They wanted their Spring Festival to concentrate more on short films and asked me if I had one. Naturally, I said yes.

Because I intended to turn a few of the Echoes of Iceland stories into short films.

And I’d taken a ton of video while in the Eastfjords.

So I selected one of the pieces that wasn’t too long (a bit over six minutes when I read it) and catalogued most of the video I’d shot. That took a while.

I came up with a very rough sense of the type of footage I wanted to include and fairly quickly had a first (very rough) rough cut.

I spent about three weeks refining that cut, playing with the sound and video to make it look good.

I used an animation plug-in to make a little bit of the video look a tad more interesting.

I realized there was a half-second of me in the video, which later was shaved back to about a quarter of a second.

I discovered that a few of the long pans looked jumpy in the edited video and I spent about a week trying to fix that (and eventually did).

I fell in love with some of the odd ambient sounds from the video and left them in.

A few of the festivals seemed genuinely confused by the film.

One person emailed me and said it was more poetry than film. Someone else said the scenery was terrible. And look, not everyone likes everything, which is fine, but if you think the scenery in the film or in Iceland in general is “terrible” then there is probably something deeply wrong with you.

In any event, “Grace” is out in the world now and I’m really proud of it.

You can watch it here: