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I’m getting ready to announce the release date and cover for the third book in The Bond Trilogy. Are you interested in being on my Advance Reading Copy team? That means you’ll get an early e-copy of the book in exchange for an (honest) Goodreads and Amazon review. Please email me at robinnkirk13@gmail.com if you’re interested. ARC team members will get special goodies as thanks.
Now that the Bond Trilogy’s third book is in, I’ve been updating my website with some extras, including a glossary of the shape language I use extensively in The Hive Queen. Check out shape language and some cool maps here.
Lately, I’ve been working on a new non-fiction book for kids that highlights 20 human rights heroes. I’m profiling people from all walks of life, times, and places. Among them is Fridtjof Nansen, the first international High Commissioner for Refugees. Nansen was also a scientist and explorer.
But let’s delve into the fabulous cover of his journal of trying to reach the North Pole! This 1898 first edition has an “elaborate silver and gilt pictorial cloth binding” according to a rare books seller (who’ll let you have the book for a mere $650.00). It’s too bad that few books are now made with such exterior appeal.
I was fascinated by Nansen’s strategy to reach the Pole. Rather than hike (or ski) there, he planned to get as close as he could in a ship, then let the ship freeze into the ice and drift close to the Pole. For the journey, he built the Fram (forward in his native Norwegian). Unlike so many explorers, he didn’t seem to suffer much. The Fram was extremely well stocked and heated, basically a cramped but comfortable floating hotel.
Even though his effort failed, Nansen became world-famous. Norway asked him to help negotiate independence from Sweden. Later, after World War I devastated Europe, he was called upon again to help bring humanitarian aid to tens of thousands of prisoners of war and refugees.
Nansen was a very serious person but he also had a playful side. He fell in love late in life and engaged in a spirited (and quite lusty) correspondence with a much younger journalist, Brenda Ueland (who writers may know from her craft book, If you want to write). Their physical relationship was brief but Nansen pined for her until his death in 1930.
One thing I won’t be able to include in my kids book are the selfies Nansen sent to Ueland. These are from Eric Utne’s edited volume of Nansen’s letters to Brenda (hers to Nansen were destroyed, Brenda, My Darling: The Love Letters of Fridtjof Nansen to Brenda Ueland. Yet they are charming. He was a man who loved life to the fullest, whether on the Fram, helping refugees, or in love.
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