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

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.