When I wrote my first novel, I did write it in English. Some people have asked me why. Actually, there was no particular reason for this, except that I like writing in English. I’m a bit funnier in English than in German. That may be because language also shapes the soul. Language is more powerful than you might think. This is one of the reasons why there are so many discussions about gendering or non-gendering, the use of words that no longer correspond to the zeitgeist or ethical norms, and so on. But that’s not what I want to talk about here. When I couldn’t sell my first (English) book on the English market, my agent at the time recommended that I translate it. It was then published in German and called “Das Obsidianherz“. Three more books of the same series followed, all initially written in English and only then…

Dystopian literature seems to be booming. It has become easy to imagine a future in which the human world comes to a bitter end. We are so close to this outcome that our present can already sense this future. It whispers in the wind. It poisons the mind. Of course, I also have ideas for dystopias. Three short stories, which contain different aspects of a truly undesirable development, can be read in my short story collection  “Machtschattenpiele (Power shadow games)”. Sometimes, however, our reality is so grey and frightening that I don’t like to write that kind of literature anymore. It’s as if reality has long since overtaken the authors’ imagination. So I take my ideas to strange and foreign worlds. Should these worlds break, no one has to die here. Yet, I think that the problems of imaginary worlds also do reflect our situation and our life and give…

Not everyone may know this, but I wrote my first four books (Das Obsidianherz, Salzträume, Jenseits des Karussells und Schwingen aus Stein) in English and then translated them into German. Of course, I would have liked them to appear in English, but the way things went is trite and frustrating. The first time I tried to tackle the English-speaking market myself. I wrote to publishers, had myself “recommended” by friends of mine, tried to find an agent in the US and also in England. I cannot say that it was raining letters of refusal, because most of the people/companies I had contacted did not react at all. Finally, the books were published in German – by Feder & Schwert. Of the four books, two received an award. The publisher now tried to place the books on the English market. Perhaps the answers were less abrasive, as publishers might deal more…

Today, on my way to work, I drove right into a beautiful sunrise. Blood red sky and bright pink clouds from the heating plant chimney. I would have liked to take a picture. But of course: on other days I’m stuck at every traffic light and could just pull up my mobile phone. Today however: excellently phased traffic lgihts and not one stop. The mobile phone stayed in my pocket. Law abinding person and so on. Meanwhile the sky has turned grey again. Eos: How nice of you to take me with you in your car today. Helios: You’re welcome. Are you sitting comfortably in front? Pretty color, that. Eos: Yes. Isn’t it? Helios: And every little cloud individually pink. You are so talented, little sister. Eos: I have a sense for details. And always too little time. Before he comes. Helios: Who? Eos: St. Peter. The one from the…

Mrs. Melchior: You want to follow a star? A star? Shouldn’t stars be faster than you – on foot? Mr. Melchior: We have camels. Mrs. Melchior: Oh, and they are faster than stars? Hardly. Mr Melchior: This goes beyond your understanding, woman! Mrs. Melchior: Whenever you can’t think of a reasonable answer, this suddenly goes beyond my understanding. Beyond my understanding my foot! Be reasonable! Stars wander all across the sky in one night. Can your camel do that? Mr. Melchior: You don’t know anything about camels either. Mrs. Melchior: You don’t say! I run this caravanserai here – while you only look at the stars at night and sleep during the day. Melchior’s caravanserai it is called! And who does all the work? I do! Mr. Melchior: Astronomy is essential. Something important is going to happen surely ! [exit Melchior] Mrs. Kaspar [enters]: Now who has come up with…

“What does Christmas mean?” asked Sven. “Father Christmas is coming” said the father without looking up from his cell phone. “No, Christ is born as a child,” Grandma said. “And which one of them is right, now?” asked Sven. “Then who is Santa?” Marie-Louise asked. She was only a little older than Sven but invariably thought she had to present her more detailed knowledge. “He’s called Satan,” corrected Grandma, whose view of the world was resolutely un-American. “He’s not called Satan at all!” “Santa and Satan are not the same, despite the anagram,” corrected Father and began to look up the definitions on Wikipedia. “I’ll show you right away.” His clumsy fingers slid over the smartphone and he frowned as if he had to thread a rope through the eye of a needle. “And what’s that about St. Nicolaus and his Krampus,” asked Maximilian-Alexander, who as a teenager felt too…

I should be ashamed of myself. You had to go far too long without a blog of mine. I tended to be much more diligent there. But I seem to  notice that the days are getting shorter. They used to be 24 hours long, but nowadays they seem to have gone down to some 17 hours per day. I’m lagging behind and eventually I shall find somebody else to blame. Anybody but me. I have so much to tell you: Right on time for last Halloween “BISSE” came out as an eBook at  Hockebooks http://www.hockebooks.de/ebook/bisse. That made me very happy, because many years ago, these short stories signified the beginning of my literary career. They are evil, little ditties, and it helps to have some well-established black humor when reading them. Without the black humour you will just have to be nicely scared. That will also work quite well.   …

A little more than a week ago, Andrea Diener came for a visit. When you reach my age, you can sometimes utter this dreaded sentence: “I already knew him/her when she they still went to school.” This is precisely and annoyingly true in Andrea’s case. I got to know Andrea shortly before her high school graduation. We were both active in the Irish culture and music scene in our favourite Irish pub, where I played music and she did Irish dancing. Well, quite some years have passed since then. Meanwhile, she is a journalist, writes great travel reports and maintains a regular podcast series, in which she interviews a wide variety of people. This time I was the lucky interviewee. We had a nice evening on my sofa, busy with questions and answers of which the questions were well versed and professional, while I pushed my answers through some nervous…