It’s spring 2025 in Amsterdam. From my window I am looking out on a quiet and sunny Saturday morning.

Later on I may make videos about the H. C. Andersen fairytales. But for now I am going to concentrate on my own fantasy story. My story is coming from the deepest place inside of me. I feel obligated to stay true to this even though I feel insecure about it. 

From watching the tutorials I have learned about the many possibilities. It’s like a vast ocean of temptations one can easily get distracted and choose something that seems easy making money. A hustle to generate means to be able to pay the costs of promoting my fantasy story. Selling mocks or T-shirts or wall art? I have looked into these options. And have concluded that it is not for me. Those who succeed in selling stuff on demand are sellers! They are the kind of types who would be able to sell you sand even in the Sahara Desert! 

I on the other hand am someone who thinks in pictures and colours and stories. I think they call someone like me “a content creator” in the digital world. It makes me feel a bit like a dinosaur when I refer to myself as a writer, who likes to paint watercolour pictures of her stories. So I am considering stepping over… just considering for now. Mind you. 

Being a beginner with a modest budget and no pro! I have to be careful not to spend too much money on subscriptions. I have yet to begin making audios and videos. However I have to begin somewhere. So I have decided to use ai voices from Elevenlabs and Canva to make videos. 

Next week I will share with You what it is like to begin working on these platforms. 

16. March 2025 - update

This week I have started using the platform IIElevenlabs. It is quite easy to access and get started. Before long I was deeply immersed in using all kinds of different voices in my English written audio book. So much so that I almost forgot everything around me. 

My own cloned voice appeared first, when I started looking around in the audio studio. “How do I get rid of that?” I asked myself and clicked on it. I clicked on the word “apply”... oeps! In a split second all 21.000 words were being spoken in English  in my own voice. That was not at all what I wanted. I wanted 30 other voices to speak. The first voice: the storyteller, I wanted that to be a male voice speaking perfect English. My own voice can’t do that, as I am Danish. Next I wanted the rest of the voices to speak for various characters in the story. At this point applying other voices was met with technical jamming and such. 

So I decided to take a break. Next day I simply uploaded my ebook. Epub file once again and started all over. This worked. From that point on it was easier to insert different voices.

Producing the audio books is a very technical activity. I miss writing stories and painting with watercolours. In my head two whole stories are flying around and a painting of a big birthday cake is asking for my attention. Next week I will inform you how I managed to get all of that under control…..

Sunday 23. March - audio book succes! I did it!

This week I succeeded in finishing with the first audio book. It ended up being 3 hours of recording. I have listened to half of it and I am very positively surpriced. All the small things that bugged me during the process of turning each sentence over to a voice seems to have disappeared. Some too long pauses and hickies and such were gone in the end version.. Maybe they were imaginary in my perfectionist mind after all. Anyway the result has exceeded my expectations. So that's nice. 

When I had finished with the last chapter of the first novel: “Villa - and his friends in the 12th dimension” in the audio studio of IIElevenlabs it was time to do the final generating and export the mp3 file. I was a bit startled then. Because this cost 53.000 credits! That’s quite a bit. Luckily I still had enough left to get it done. The process took some minutes. The mp3 file turned out to be quite big. My little laptop would not open it. So I proceeded to reduce its size using a free convert program. After that I could open the file and listen to it. 

Even though I am very happy with this project, I have decided to change one voice and do the generating again. I wonder if it will cost me 53.000 credits again. Next week I will let you know. 

Anyway, there is still one more novel left for me to change into an audio book. I am definitely going to be using the audio studio of IIElevenlabs again. But I am going to wait until after 10 april. Because I don’t have enough credits left. 

Sunday 30. March - Spring and tulips in Keukenhof

This week I proceeded to fix minor details in my audiobook “Villa - and his friends in the 12th dimension”. I reopened the file in the audio studio of IIElevenlabs. It cost me about 6.000 credits -  and not 50.000 as I had been wandering about. The audio book takes less than 3 hours to listen to. I am really satisfied with the result. A friend of mine - his name is Lars - happens to like reading fantasy novels - so he is going to be reading it and give reviews on the story and the audio version. I expect his reviews after the Easter holidays. 

But for now I am going to concentrate on promoting the Villa story on Youtube. Making videos in Canva is the next step. This means making a video featuring myself. It has taken me a whole year to work up the courage to do this. Last year I tried promoting the first novel with a facebook campaign. I quickly realized the potential of making videos. I have been following several youtubers over the last year. I have come to really appreciate the positive vibes that they send out. There are interesting and funny people of all ages and many different cultural backgrounds . You can find endless topics and I also like how they interact with each other. 

So I am getting there…. It is going to happen soon. I really think that Youtube is a good place to spread some of my own good vibes.  I intend to begin a Youtube channel of my own. 

Next I take a dive into the Canva platform…. Why does it take so long.. You may ask yourself… well..  It's quite time consuming, really ..  making the videos and editing them… and again it is very technical.  If one day I have enough subscribers, I am going to leave it to an agency to do it all. But for now I have to start up on my own.. 

6 April - Working with Canva and updating my Linkedin

The audio, e-book as well as the paper bag version. 

How do I make sure that someone from the US or Canada or Japan for that matter can really get access to this simply by clicking on some button next to the youtube film? I am not sure about this but I will be checking out if it works. Before I  go ahead and publicise my introductory video. 

In addition I started on a course this week. This course is for immigrant women in this region who are interested in finding a job. 17 women of different cultures and ages take part in this course. I will be attending this course every week until fall. It is very inspiring.

13 April -  Paintings of The Villa Story

While I was writing the first novel - back in 2022 - I also tried to describe my imagination through paintings. It was a lot of fun, although I was not satisfied with the quality of the paintings. I mean, they are really childlike. Still though they do reflect the atmosphere that I am trying to express in my writing.  In this blog I am going to show some of the paintings. 

The first picture is Villa standing on the mainstreet in his favorit village. He is looking down on me. I am oblivious to him standing there and is just going for a walk in the village. Like so many times before. In the second picture we have Gardu. He is standing in his garden. A small human figure is looking up at him. The last illustration is Shoro. He is out in the water at the shoreline. Looking at the beach where I am sitting in a sunchair.  

On the first painting you meet baby Winngadur. Villa is introduced to her by her parents. On the second painting I describe Gardu's encounter with a Harem  

On the first picture Shoro is busted. He stole a book from Samlen and got it all wet. Villa is not amused, because it is a book borrowed from the library. He is informing Shoro - Lord of the Sea shore - that a library book is supposed to go back to the library. On the last picture I draw Villa and Winngadur as young adults. They are engaged. I try to describe Winngadurs seethroughness. You can see the bench that they are sitting on through her. You can also see her wings. She has beedle wings. 

This last year I have attended a watercolour class with the purpuse of improving my painting skills. I am very satisfield with what I have learned. Although I am not going to be a "Rembrandt", it is very much fun to go to this class. In later blogs I shall reveal to you how my progress is coming along. 

20 April - Easter Holiday