Sweden is a small country where about ten million people live. It’s a cold country with temperatures rarely over 85 F (25 C) during the summer, and the winters can last up to six months, depending on where in Sweden you live.

I moved here from Poland in 1985 with my mother and younger brother. I spent my summer holidays in Poland, but I grew up and went to school in Sweden. Swedish quickly became my main language.  

All children in Sweden learn English in school. I started in fourth grade, and I’ve never had any big issues with it. I’m fluent in Polish, Swedish, and English, but I’ve also studied German, Sign Language, and Japanese. Today, I’m planning to learn Korean, mostly for the fun of it, but also because I’ve always wanted to be fluent in at least one more language. I’ve always had my eyes set on Asian languages because Asia has always fascinated and interested me.

MY DREAM OF BECOMING AN AUTHOR

Becoming an author has always been my big dream. I’ve been writing for as long as I can remember. My head has always been filled with stories.

Coming up with stories has never been an issue. Instead, I have the issue of having too many ideas and too little time.

Even if my imagination has always been on top, my writing skills required a lot of work. When I look back, I can only laugh at how bad my writing used to be, but at the same time, it’s exciting to see how I’ve evolved. I’m still learning, and I will probably never stop learning.

AUTHOR SCHOOL

When I was a child, I just wrote, without any thoughts on grammar, spelling, and so on. The important thing was that writing was fun. The rest would come with time.

When I became a teenager, I wanted to learn more. The answer? An author school.  

In the late ’90s, the school cost about 9000 SEK, which is about 1000 US dollars today. Back then, that was a lot of money, but I was determined and decided to do it.

Now when I look back, I didn’t get what I expected from the education, but I’m still happy I took the course. It showed me what I could become, but English was still not on my list.

It wasn’t until my early thirties that writing in English became interesting when Amazon and self-publishing came into the picture. Back then, my mind was set on becoming published traditionally because there was no other option.  

DOOMED TO FAIL FROM THE START?

Even if I wanted to be traditionally published, I honestly never really tried. Sure, I sent my scripts to a few publishing houses and hoped for a miracle, but I always felt out of place every time I sent them in.

Mostly because I wrote fantasy, a genre that was extremely small in Sweden back then. You’d find authors like Robert Jordan and J.R.R Tolkien on the bookshelves but barely any Swedish fantasy authors. There were only a handful of them and it was obvious my chances of success were slim, very slim.

Then there also was the issue that hardly any publishing houses focused on fantasy. Those who did usually had another genre as their main genre.  

Even today, fantasy, and genres like romance, science fiction, and so on, are small, but they are slowly growing.

Ebooks are still not on most peoples to-read-lists. Most people still prefer printed books. Traditional publishing is also still the way to go, but self-publishing is spreading, and more and more people start their own publishing houses to be able to self-publish.

ENGLISH COMING INTO THE PICTURE

Writing in English hasn’t always been obvious to me. For a long time, I was against it, and my mind was set on becoming a Swedish author, but when I realized how difficult that was going to be and when I heard of Amazon and self-publishing, I changed my mind.

I realized learning to write in English was the way to go to achieve my dreams. It’s an international language after all, and knowing it opened new doors.

I already knew English quite well when I started my company Sense of Romance in 2013, but writing a book in English was a completely different thing.

That year, I probably read about sixty books to learn grammar, expressions, punctuation, and more. Educating myself became my main focus.

The first book I published in English was “Angel in Chains“. That book taught me a lot about how to, and how not to, write in English. I still use a dictionary sometimes if I’m unsure of an expression or a word, and I’m aware that I still have a lot to learn, but slowly, I’ll get there!