The Author

I grew up in Bavaria where I went to school and graduated from Munich University (English and history). I wrote my first novel secretly at school at the tender age of thirteen, unpublished and hidden away where hopefully no one will ever find it. An M.A. and two state exams led the way into the publishing industry and from there into professional writing: short stories, novels, poems and songs.

The vagaries of love are to blame for my relocation to Hesse.

Much of what I write can be found along the fantasy fringe. However, you will not stumble over sweet fairies or soppy elves in my work. I like excitement and adventure. I love black humour. And what I like is what you get.

Obviously my readers also like excitement, adventure and black humour for they chose my novel "Das Obsidianherz" to be the recipient of the 2009 Deutsche Phantastik Preis /German SF and Fantasy Award (in the category best newcomer novel). This makes me very happy. Dear readers, thank you for your opinion and your vote - I promise it will stay exciting!

Why fantasy?

I have always liked to explore the fringe, the neglected and much maligned genre literature and other topics away from the mainstream. Indeed I even followed this predilection during my university studies. I found the pottering about in copiously covered classical subjects if not without merit then at least a tad uninspiring. If you write the three-hundred-thousandth thesis on the same topic this may be assiduous but may also mean that you do nothing but transport other people's out of date opinions.

I never believed that a genre classification in itself was more than a mere label to enable a librarian to set a book on a certain shelf. Whoever uses genre classification as an evaluation criterion probably lacks other and more significant means to assess literature. A certain shelf space will not tell you whether a book is good or bad, exciting or boring, full of imagination or merely dreary.

I like fantasy and science fiction - and have absolutely no qualms about admitting that. Not everything produced in this genre is equally good. But that goes equally well for thrillers, historical novels, for reference books and cooking guides and even for those highly recommended and critique spoiled mainstream tomes that the image-conscious educated elite likes to adorn their shelves with.

We all need imagination. It won't hurt to think beyond the narrow limits of everyday life and to let your fancy ramble in the realms of wonder. And nobody is going to bite you if you do.

The world is full of colours. Time to remove our black and white glasses.

The Books

The world is full of colours. Time to remove our black and white glasses.