Punk industrial hard rocker with attitude is still alive!

My debut novel "Punk industrial hard rocker with attitude" (Punkindustriell hårdrockare med attityd) is still very much alive.

Today I visited a college in Sweden and talked about the background of the book, why and how I wrote it.

It all started with a short story I'd written when I did a writing course. It was about a girl called Amanda who wanted to have a piercing done by her older punk friend Sid, but he refused to do it, said it was too close to the eye. In the opening chapter of "Punk industrial hard rocker with attitude", Amanda the main character wants her nose pierced by her older female friend Kim (Sid had to change both name and sex!), but Kim says no and helps her to colour her hair instead.

I also revealed that the novel has no plot. But I let Amanda overcome some traumas that pushed the story forward. The trauma of experiencing the first piss-up, the first kiss, the first sex, the first boyfriend. I thought those things were very traumatic when I went to school and I still feel very uncomfortable walking into a school building. Even the teachers could relate to what I was talking about, confirming the unwritten laws about who's popular and who's not.

I didn't have much time to talk about my current book project, Swenglish, but you can read all about it here.

PÅ SVENSKA

Early Midlife Crisis

I'm worried that I'm "only" going to be 60 years old as I'm going through a mid-life crisis, but in Swedish there's no word for midlife crisis, instead there are two different concepts: "the 30-year-old crisis" and "the 40-year-old crisis".

My crisis started last summer when I was 28. For the first time I had no desire to live and it frightened me. It felt like a burden having another 50 years to fill, fill with what?

My three biggest dreams had already come true:

*writing a novel and getting it published (my award-winning Swedish novel "Punk industrial hard rocker with attitude")

*experiencing requited love (my 5 year long relationship with Sky)

*travelling to New Zealand to track down a long lost relative (my gran's cousin)

It felt like nothing could ever match those amazing experiences and that life had become pretty dull. No career (as I'd changed my writing career to England and to writing in English, and was starting from scratch again), no place to live (just renting rooms in other people's houses) and no meaningful relationships.

So for two years I've been walking about in some kind of mist, but the other night under the full moon I had an actual light bulb moment. All of a sudden it became clear to me: I came up with a plan for what I'm going to do with my life. At least for a year, staring on my 30th birthday on the 26th of February. This project involves at least 30 people and I do hope that you're out there! More info later ...

Swedish Novel in English?

Every week I meet English people who want to read my Award-Winning Swedish Young Adult Novel, Punkindustriell Hårdrockare med Attityd ("Punk Industrial Hard Rocker with Attitude"). I hope the whole novel will be translated one day (by someone who's not me ...)! My agent has showed an interest and asked me to write a synopsis and translate a sample chapter, so that's what I've been working on this week.

First I re-read the novel. I've only read it once before ... A strange experience reading your own novel, especially now when I have a fair bit of distance to it. It felt like I was reading but not concentrating as I knew what was going to happen. Yet I surprised myself. There were so many paragraphs that seemed new to me, and I got confused by my own structure ... As the novel is set over the course of three years there are obviously big leaps and you kind of have to fill in those gaps yourself ... Or perhaps I just got confused because I was reading in a feverish state, being confined to my bed by a nasty flu ...

Anyway. I did manage to write a synopsis, but my playwright friend thought it sounded more like a travel itinerary! Synopsises are hard, and sometimes don't do the novel justice, but I'm happy with what I managed to write anyway. As for the sample chapter ... It was hard to find a chapter without Swedish slang or other typical Swedish references, but in the end I settled for a neutral chapter where the main character is in her bedroom, not knowing what to do with the sample condoms she got from a Youth Clinic person visiting her college. There's also a short dialogue with her Dad. I do hope this chapter is enough to give the agent a flavour of the novel ... The flavour is punk industrial hard rock with attitude!

Who the f*** is Kitty?

"Knutte", a punk guy I was in love with (unhappily) when I was fifteen, told me he refused to wear advertising. I wonder if he's escaped Kitty. Even I own a pair of Hello Kitty socks. (A birthday present from my mum). But I do wonder. Who the f*** is Kitty?

In almost every shop I've been lately there are clothes, wallets, pens etc. with the Hello Kitty logo. What worries me is that people just buy these items because they are available. What if Kitty is a murderer? Luckily she isn't, but I had to google her to find out what she's all about. A Japanese animation. Fair enough. I doubt though that most people who wear Hello Kitty T-shirts/socks/knickers or write with a Hello Kitty pen have ever seen an episode of the animation.


This got me thinking. I could probably attract people to buy my novel, Punkindustriell hårdrockare med attityd, by producing products with the book logo. It was actually my brother's idea with the top (the image on the top is the same as my book cover). I only had two of them especially made to wear when I go to book fairs etc. But every time I wear the top someone asks me where they can buy it. It would be free advertising for me.

The only downside is that I don't own the copy right of the image. It belongs to the designer Ida Branzell Rosén and I can't thank her enough for making such a brilliant image. It would be weird if people walked about with the image of my book cover and not even knowing where the image came from ... So next time you buy a Hello Kitty T-shirt think about if you really want to be a walking advertisement for something you're not passionate about. (Apologies to all true Hello Kitty fans.)

Public Speaking: my journey from shy smalltown girl to published author

I've spent a few days in Sweden to talk about my life as a writer and my first novel Punkindustriell hårdrockare med attityd (Punk industrial hard rocker with attitude)

This week it was the opening of a new cultural centre in my hometown, Nässjö. On Tuesday I was invited to hold a talk in the library and the day after I did the same 45 min talk at the youth centre. I also went to another town, Tranås to talk to young people about identity (which is the main theme in my novel).

It's always a bit nerve-wracking to speak in my hometown as a lot of people know me and/or my family and I can't get away with any lies ... Not that I usually lie, but sometimes I change things around a bit ...

Even if the audience was very different at these three occasions I basically spoke about the same thing: my journey from quiet/shy/ugly smalltown girl to confident "punk industrial hard rocker with attitude".

I made an active choice the summer when I was sixteen. When school started again (in Sweden you go to the school "gymnasiet" from when you're 16 until 19) I wanted to be a punkrocker. I also had thoughts of becoming a "good-looking popular girl", but decided it was much harder so I settled for the punk rock style.

Now, 10-12 years later I've realised it's just as hard to become a punkrocker as it is to become a good-looking girl. It takes courage to find your own style, search for alternative music and go to school looking like a car accident with hairspray- damaged hair and ripped jeans. For me it was a relief though, not having to keep up with the latest fashion, although in the end I compared myself to other punks and wondered if I was a "real" punk ...

Whoever you are it's tough to grow up. I think everybody spends far too much time in front of the mirror worrying about if they're okay or not. Sometimes the beautiful people are not visible because they are too shy to be seen ...

Shortlisted

It paid off going a bit submission mad the other week. My short story, Lovers of the Planet was shortlisted for Spilling Ink's short story competition and will be published in their annual print anthology. Very exciting!

At the moment I'm in my hometown Nässjö, Sweden. Tonight I'm doing a talk at the new local library about my writing career and first novel Punkindustriell hårdrockare med attityd, and tomorrow night I'll do the same talk at the new Youth Centre. Friday I'm going to Tranås to speak at a school.

And I'm not the only lucky one in the family ... My Dad won 3rd prize in a local sunflower competition ...

You can read Lovers of the Planet by clicking here. It was inspired by a woman who knocked on my door and "forced me" to sign up for Friends of the Earth ...

The Literature Week in Gothenburg

I was one of about thirty Swedish authors who took part at the Literature Week in Gothenburg. It's an yearly event where authors of children's and Young Adult fiction visit schools to talk about their books and their writing.

The fifteen-year-olds that I met at Kärralundsskolan were good at both listening and asking questions. Some people have said that my first novel, Punkindustriell hårdrockare med attityd doesn't have a proper plot, but I explained that some books are character driven rather than plot driven. The protagonist Amanda is very insecure and is feeling at bit left out at school. This has nothing to do with her family. I'm fed up with the common theme that in order to feel bad about yourself it has to be a big reason behind it, e.g. one of your parents have died, your mum is an alchoholic or your dad is mentally ill. I think it's enough to be a teenager to feel bad.

Amanda is 16 and has never been drunk, has bever been kissed, has never had a boyfriend and has never had sex. For me these were really big issues when I grew up and that's why I wanted to write about it. So the plot is based on Amanda's anxiety around these rituals and how she goes through them and deals with them. I told the teenagers that it's important to remember that everybody develops in their own time and that some have sex when they are thirteen and for others it doesn't happen until they are in their twenties. Nothing is right or wrong ...

On the Wednesday night all authors were invited to an evening where everybody had five minutes to present themselves to librarians and teachers in the Gothenburg area. It was nervwracking, but hopefully it'll lead to more invites to talk at schools and libraries in the future. It was also a great thing for me to meet Per Nilsson and Katarina Kieri whom are two Swedish writers I really admire. It's a surreal feeling that someone you look up to has read your book and liked it ...

All in all I really enjoyed my time in Gothenburg. Most of the other authors have been doing this for years and they laughed at my enthusiasm about staying at a hotel with all expenses paid ... I hope I'll get invited to loads and loads of things in the future, but that I can still be grateful about sleeping in a bed with clean white sheets and having a massive buffet breakfast.

I was lucky with the weather too as the headlines cried out that it were the warmest days in Gothenburg this year. Yet there were ice and snow left in some places ...

Lost in translation

This week my novel (the Swedish one) was reviewed in Jyllandsposten, one of Denmark's biggest morning papers. The review was very positive when it came to the contents of the book, and said I'd captured the teenage angst very well, and that I showed there was hope in the end. However, unlike the Swedish reviewers, this one really hated the cover, title and author pic - saying that it looked like a print-on-demand book. I don't agree with this at all;I love the cover and the pic of me in pink hair.

But the biggest problem according to the reviewer was the translation. Swedish expressions that were unknown to the Danes etc. I don't know Danish, but as far as I know the translator has done a great job. He emailed me every week asking things, making sure to get it right ...

Yet. It's a bloody difficult book to translate. People ask me daily why "Punkindustriell hårdrockare med attityd" is not translated to English. I have two answers.
1. I'm not confident enought to do it myself, as I know it's a very site specific book and I've used expression that only exist in my hometown.
2. I haven't found the right translator. It has to be someone who's native English, but has spent years in Sweden, and has a thorough understanding of the school system and the youth culture.

Click here to read the review - if you understand Danish that is ...

First School Talk in English

I've done a lot of school visits in Sweden, talking about my writing and my debut novel Punkindustriell hårdrockare med attityd. Today I did my first school talk in England. In English obviously. The only thing that wasn't English about it was the audience - they were all Swedish students at Loxdale Centre in Portslade. Eight years ago I went to this school myself and it was great to be back.

I called my one-woman-show "Life after Loxdale" and spoke about my life in England, how I first made friends, found a job and a place to live. A lot of the students laughed when I showed pictures of myself as a dinner lady and a barmaid. But the focus was on my career as a writer and performance poet. How I started out going to poetry groups just to make friends and ended up being invited to perform in Berlin. How the isolation I first felt when I moved to England resulted in writing novels. And I tried to explain the battle in my head between two languages.

In between the talking I performed poems that were inspired by my life and the audience was also very lucky to hear an extract from Replacing Angel - my first English novel in progress. It seemed to go down well and one guy said it felt very real, as if I had experienced it myself.

After the talk I stayed for lunch and reminisced about the good old days. My time at Loxdale is probably the most important time of my life as I went there when I was 19, straight after finishing school in Sweden. It was the beginning of my adult life and apart from learning to speak English I also built up the confidence to stay in England and go my own way in life. I'm very pleased that I got invited back for another talk next term.

Special thanks to Saskia, my former drama teacher and friend who came to listen and took the picture.

My Swedish novel in Danish

Today it arrived.
My own copy.
Of my own book.
In Danish.
I understand most of it.
The official launch date in Denmark is 29 Sep.

It's a surreal feeling.
To hold something you've created in your hands.
It's so surreal I can't be happy.
Well, of course I'm happy,
but I'm not jumping up and down if you know what I mean ...
It's a bit like being in hospital with a baby
before the world has seen it ...
Or it's more like having a child
that has moved abroad ...
Or having a second child
that looks exactly like the first one
but speaks another language ...

If you understand Swedish or Danish or even Norwegian
you can read more about the Danish publication
on the publishers website.

YOUNG OR OLD ADULTS?

When do Young Adults become Old?

I'm 27 and still feel like a teenager from time to time.
Sadly I'm too old for Youth Advice Centres that welcome 14-25 year-olds.
The Young Adult section in the library is aimed at 13-19 year-olds.

My first novel, Punkindustriell hårdrockare med attityd,
was published and marketed in Sweden as a crossover between
teenage and adult fiction.
Yet, most people seemed to place me in the Young Adult box.

It has never been my intention to write for teenagers.
Even if my stories are about Young Adults
it doesn't mean that Older Adults can't read them.
I've had positive responses from People between 11 and 60.

The novel I'm working on now, Replacing Angel,
has a Young Adult as a main character,
but I still don't know what genre it is.
It is contemporary fiction for sure,
but is it for Young Adults or Older Adults?
Who decides?
I don't want Older Adults to miss out on what I'm writing
just because I've been put in a certain box.

As an example I'm very pleased that Melvin Burgess books
Junk and Doing it can be found both in the Adult Fiction
and Young Adult Fiction sections in Brighton&Hove libraries.

On Sunday I'm performing at the Peace Festival on Hove Lawns.
In the Teenage Tent. (3pm, officially called the Future Tent)
But please feel free to come and see me even if you are an Older Adult.