In five short days, Ravished by a Viking will release. That’s how many days I have to convince you that you want to read this book.

Here’s my first argument. The world building in my book goes deeper than the surface. Every facet of my characters’ lives has been re-envisioned—beginning with the story of how my Vikings arrived at their present state. I’ve built a legend into my story that will resonate throughout the series.

Every great quest tale ought to have a legend. You remember Buffy’s “There can only be one…”? Or the legend of the Aztec gold for the Pirates of the Caribbean?

When I started dreaming up how I could make my “Vikings in Space” world less ridiculous than it sounded, I knew the key was in developing a legend that made the concept plausible. I hit the books. My own personal library books, that is. I read everything I had regarding Viking history and mythology until a history for my Norsemen far from home began to form.

In the dusk of the final age of man, the bravest of warriors fought a fierce battle, joining all the peoples of the northern lands to battle a common foe, sure that the war they waged was Ragnorok—the end of times for all Norsemen. For the gods had come to Midgard, Earth, setting challenges for the warriors and plucking the fiercest, the strongest, and the most prolific breeders to abide with them in the new world where the “Regeneration” would occur. As the fires of the great war died to smoldering embers, The Chosen followed the gods onto the Bifrost, the shimmering bridge leading from Midgard to Asgard where the gods reside, carrying their worldly goods, and bringing their women and their animals to settle the golden world they’d been promised.

But the dreams of a land of endless harvests, green pastures rich enough to sustain them through the ages, gold vessels to sup from, and jewels to adorn their women, proved false. The gods sought to trap the warriors in endless labors, forcing them to burrow under icebound plains in search of “pure light.” Abandoned on their frozen world, the warriors rebelled against their slavery and returned to old habits and old ways, building fortresses of rock and ice. They chased away the gods, but soon they battled each other, raiding to survive, stealing food and women to sustain their endless appetites.

Until the day the gods returned…

~New Icelandic Chronicles

Ragnorok, the Bifrost bridge, and the Regeneration, are all concepts pulled directly from Norse mythology. And I wrote my new legend in the figurative language and tradition of the Icelandic Sagas—as Norsemen might have if they’d been uprooted during the Early Middle Ages, before Christianity arrived. Their history and the stories they’d tell wouldn’t stop when they left Earth. And when you enter the pages, you quickly realize that the men who exist on that new world aren’t as simple as the legend depicts. They may live in a harsh, unforgiving environment, but they aren’t crude or stupid. They are imbued with a sense of destiny. And they know their lives and adventures will be recounted in the old tradition.