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Missing person, E. Bray

Be kind to share this for me, im looking for a man stationed in Iceland 1941. called E. Bray.
He might have been American or British. He was about 20-35 years old. 
If u do know anything about him, please let me know, 
Please contact sirrysig1@gmail.com

Here comes the story of the month!

A true story from Sirrý Sig´s life

At a certain point in life things change, and suddenly one finds it important to figure out where one comes from.

Who am I? Where do I come from? Who are my ancestors?  

Yes, as I get older I would like to know more about who my grandfather; my father’s father was / is. There is a whole generation of my family missing.

But I can imagine, that no one wants to know the answers to these questions as much as my dad would like to know who his father was / is.

My dad, was about two years old, when his mother died. When he grew up, no one knew the name of his father, nor where he came from.

He heard rumors that his father was an American, British, a Frenchman, an Indian or someone from Florida. He also heard rumors  that his father had died just off the coast of Reykjavík, and last but not least, that his parents had been engaged and it had been announced in the papers.

My father, Sigurður Konráð Konráðsson,  asked me to look into it, which I did. A few years ago I spent a good deal of time browsing at the National Archives, looking through old newspapers with out finding a trace. Finally I gave up.

I was not the only one looking. However none of us found anything about my grandmother and grandfather’s engagement in these papers. Some of the paper-sheets were also missing bits and pieces. After months of looking, I thought that the engagement announcement, if it ever existed, must have been on one of these missing papers.

Maybe things were just the way the they were supposed to be.

One evening earlier this month, I was working on a story and I was looking for information on the Internet. I was about to go to bed when I tried browsing this fantastic web applications timarit.is (transl. Magazines.is) and without thinking or by dumb luck, I typed in the name of my grandmother and the date of the engagement. Then I scrolled down the screen for a moment and couldn´t believe my own eyes, there it was! The engagement! In black and white. Of course I did not go to bed.

I had found the name of the man who was engaged to my grandmother, E. Bray.

I immediately sent my dad e-mails and continued to search for more information on E. Bray but have not found anything yet.

Now we have contacted the U.S. Embassy and they have given us some information about how to go about continuing our search. I´m gathering all the information we have about this person, who is possible, our grandfather. But the information does not amount to much. We just have to cross our fingers and hope for the best.

Funny how things turn out sometimes. Is this a coincidence or fate?

And I have to ask, why now?

This story is true. It is not over and the end is not foreseeable.

If you knew of a young man named E. Brady, about 20 years of age who was stationed in Iceland during the world war from 1941 -1945, then please contact us. My father, me, my siblings and my children would love to know something about this missing link from our family tree.

Sirrý Sig. is signing a book contract today!

When we first met, it was through our writing on rithringur.is (CritiqueCircle.com).
Actually this story, Thorey wants to be a Princess, was one of the first stories written by Sirrý Sig. that Hildur Enóla read. It´s a beautiful very kind and friendly story about a girl spending the day with her grandmother. They do normal things all day but make everything seem a bit magical and the whole story just shines with love and maternal affection. Hildur Enóla instantly knew that this story would be published some day, and this is how she ended her critique, six and a half year ago:

How will you go about the illustrations?  Are you going to leave that up to the publisher? Do you have an artist in mind? Can you illustrate yourself? 

I´m looking forward to hearing how things go and will be keeping an eye out for the next story about Thorey.

Well, now it´s six and a half years later, and the contract is being signed today.

Sirrý Sig. Congratulations!

Hildur Enóla and Sirrý Sig. The year 2012 in retrospect

 The year 2012 has definitely been eventful for us as authors.

During the last few years we´ve been writing together so by the beginning of 2012, we had plenty of finished short stories, which we of course, wanted to get published. We decided to try the conventional way and compiled some of these into a short story collection that we took to a publisher in January.

The publisher told us that they would like to publish only a part of the collection. They wanted us to lengthen a few of the stories, and publish them together as a theme novel. We naturally assumed that they meant the four connected stories, so we started plotting how to best go about adding to them.

Among other things we came up with an idea for a novel based on the events in these stories. Then the publisher surprised us. They wanted us to work on some other stories so they could put together a novel about the interesting subject of “loneliness.” We were amazed since only one of these stories touches the subject of loneliness. In fact, it is the shortest story in the collection, and it´s the shortest one because (in our opinion) it would be boring if it was longer. So after a short consideration we declined the offer and decided to do it our way; 

“Self publish.”

Anyone who has done that knows that this decision was the beginning of a lot of work. Much of which has nothing to do with writing. Puh! We were not even just going to stick with our little beautiful island, Iceland. No we were going to go big! We set out to get a translator so we could enter the international market with our little book One Thing led To Another.

We found a translator, Simon Hjaltason, to work with. Made a contract between the three of us and since Hildur Enóla lives in Denmark, we mailed it between countries so that we could all sign it with witnesses.

Then there was the big haunt to find co-operators to read, edit, proofread and design the cover. There were hours spent looking at websites, calculating costs, and countless e-mails were sent back and forth to find the right people to work with. And the finishing touches took A LOT longer than we anticipated. Partly because we were nervous and wanted it to be perfect. The whole process took about six months, so it was in October when our e-book finally was finally published at emma.is and amazon.com.

We decided to create our own informal publishing firm just to have a name behind our books so we arranged for a name competition on Facebook. There were many good suggestions but we ended up, however, by choosing the most obvious, simple name; “Nostri Publication” meaning simply “our publishing.”

Of course Hildur Enóla had to study the numerology a bit before she accepted it. It turned out that the word Nostri gives a total number of 32, which is a  lucky business and mass media number. Then she´s of the opinion that the letter N is beautiful character; at least in it´s capital form. It also looks like two I´s that are connected, symbolizing our work together. S in the middle of a name implies flexibility that fits well, since we have to be cooperative. The letter I, at the end says that we are independent women who can think for ourselves.

 

So we are pleased with the name Nostri and think it´s cute.

Self publishing is tough and based on "do-it-yourself” to keep costs down. Because we decided to go this route, we had to learn how to do a lot of strange stuff in a short amount of time. Among the things we have had to learn is how to use applications like Calibre and Sigil for turning the word documents into e-books and try to fiddle with the naughty HTML codes. Digging around to figure out settings in Word that we hadn´t even known existed. Work with programs such as Photoshop and Gimp to assemble the covers and to produce images of ourselves for marketing purposes. Use InDesign to create layout to print. Try to figure out all these  mysterious settings on the Kindle publishing website and Create Space.  As well as working on our blogs and websites, simple things that sometimes still faze our middle aged minds.

Then there is the marketing. Can´t you just hear the tired sigh?  It is a whole continent in itself for the Indie author.

 How do we sell our books if nobody knows that we or they exists?

Now this is where the brave one, Sirrý Sig., has been moving mountains. She handles the Icelandic market while Hildur Enóla hides away in her basement in Denmark Sirrý Sig., the ADHD afflicted overachiever, has landed a few newspaper interviews. She made bumper stickers:

Who´s Sirrý Sig?

And handed them out to everyone, made a T-shirt with the same motto and has been all around Reykjavík with flyers. She drops down comments everywhere on the internet to advertise us and even put together a book trailer after finding out that such a thing exists. Note: this she did without almost no prior experience in using the Windows Live Movie Maker.

Last but not least, her most difficult marketing task is to get the mousy little Hildur Enóla to do anything that might draw attention to herself.

In connection with marketing efforts, we´re to be found at these cyber spots:

On Facebook:

 Sirrý Sig. rithöfundur , Hildur Enóla author, and

Blogspot: NostriPublication on blogspot

And of course on twitter: Sirrý Sig. and Hildur Enóla

Stay in touch!

Back to writing, which unfortunately has been a little neglected, due to all the before mentioned activities. But at the beginning of the year, soon after we decided to self publishing, we began to write a novel based on the events in the related short stories. We have been adding to it sporadically throughout the year and are well underway with it.

In February, Sirrý Sig. participated in the national children's book competition with her story The Dragon Inside. Later she also passed her illustrated children's book Þórey Wants to be a Princess, to a publisher, but got rejected. But good news now at the end of the year! The illustrated book will be released in early 2013 with Odinseye publishing.

And there is definitely still hope for The Dragon Inside too.

Also on the National Icelandic Language Day, Sirrý Sig. red from her princess book at a kindergarten.

Early in 2012, Hildur Enóla once again pulled out her never ending project about the aloof alien Íohúlú, (might become Eeo-Wholoo in English. Any opinions?), finished writing it and sent the project to Sirrý Sig. for beta reading. She promptly labelled it as boring and unexciting and sent it back covered with negative red ink comments. So Hildur Enóla sat down again, sweating in anguish. Almost back to square one, she tried her best to put some tension and suspense in the book. She hopes she has succeeded and now Íohúlú is going through a second reading session with the much gentler author, Rosa Novella. So there is vague hope that the aloof alien lands in electronic book stores around Easter. That is to say, if Sirrý Sig. does not get to see the story before then.

At the end of March, Sirrý Sig. got restless since she felt we weren´t fretting enough, so she set up a new project for us. The goal was to write fifty-two plots for short stories for kids in as many weeks. Now we have about thirty plots and will definitely reach that goal. Some of the stories are actually close to being finished. It's been a fantastically fun project and various great characters have appeared, such as Tony Washington the navel orange, Aesa the penguin and Rock the rabbit.

Other projects that we participated we in during the year:

A romance novel contest at the weekly magazine Vikan where Hildur Enóla won first place for her short story, "Icelandic Honey."

We puffed up our egos a bit and decided to be bold and adventurous and applied together for a sponsorship to write our novel based on One Thing Led to Another.

As a part of keeping costs down we´ve been collaborating with other writers and have been doing exchange work. Helping each other by reading, criticizing, commenting and correcting for one another. We work quite a bit with Rosa Novella. She read One Thing Led to Another for us and Hildur Enóla read the book Lina Descret Book 2 for her. It is Rosa Novellas second book in a fantasy book series about the only creator-destroyer in the world “Create.” As previously stated, Rosa is now reading Íohúlú; the boring alien story for Hildur Enóla.

Sirrý never stops. This is an example of her latest editing of our already published book!

We are still gathering more collaborators and work partners. We anticipate an easier self publishing year since we already found some wonderful people to work with and have been through it all once.

This fall, we decided to participate in making the Icelandic Critique Circle (rithringur.is) first short story collection book. It was interesting work and a lot of fun, as thirteen writers were working together through Google Doc. The book was released on 12th December 2012. It´s Icelandic name Rithringur.is Smásögur 2012, sort of meaning if it was in English: CritiqueCircle.com Short Stories 2012.

This has been some really good teamwork. One of us is a professional translator and had offered to translate the book for us! So it will be available in English too!

Hildur Enóla set the book up for e-publishing and is now setting it up on Create Space for print on demand.

Just because everyone should have a paper novel on their shelf to gloat about; beaming with pride.

In the midst of all this autumn chaos, a newspaper advertised a Christmas story contest. Of course just about all of the 13 writers, us included of course, had to participate. Our group leader won the contest. We were all thrilled. “Good job Július!” He advertised our book and the critique circle for us with this victory.

And as for us, Sirrý Sig. and Hildur Enóla, our Christmas stories will be published in the groups next book. Because so many of us had short Christmas stories ready after the contest we decided to publish them together.

Since we were only using a few of our many short stories for One Thing Led To Another, we felt we were just about ready with a another short story collection book. Already last summer we decided that it would be called Icelandic Love since it contains six very authentic Icelandic love stories.

Five of the stories are already in the editing, four of them are already roughly translated into English and we have already chosen a spectacular cover from the talented designer, Keri Knutsen.

So now the only issue we have, are our speculations about the publishing date. Hildur Enóla says it will be now in January but Sirrý predicts that it will be in February.

Never mind that, just buy the thing when it comes out. Especially if you feel like being enticed with Icelandic Love at it´s best, it´s most sexy, it´s sweetest, it´s worst and it´s most creepy.

To sum it all up:

Considering all the work we have told you about. Note: never even mentioning our day jobs. You might think that there has not been any time to write. But when we add it all up it comes down to the following:

We have drafts for thirty children's short stories, a draft for one whole children's book, a fantasy novel that is well under way. The almost ready Icelandic Love book and several other finished short stories.
And we´re still going strong. There is a lot to be learned. Next on the agenda is an erotic novel with the working title: The Hot Tub. It´s still just warming up.

Now we are still here. Each of us, in her own little corner of Scandinavia. Both learning and practicing writing good erotic material. As with everything else we have very different methods.

The brave overactive Sirrý Sig. listens to erotic stories while she is writing about something else, putting together crazy video tapes, editing, advertising, coaxing Hildur Enóla to be braver or doing whatever else her overactive mind can think of.

The lazy mousy Hildur Enóla bought a handbook about how to write erotic material. She found it absolutely thrilling, buried her nose in it and has now began translating it to Icelandic.

And you know what? After having put all this together into one article, we wonder: 

 

“When did we do all this?”

Merry christmas

We wish you a merry christmas.

Hildur Enóla and Sirrý Sig.

 

Book trailer