Writer’s Life – the poetry of small things

When the Last Page Is Written

The first few days after the finished manuscript …

La Vie en Rose

Reason to celebrate a bit: The author copies for the French edition of «The Sky Above Darjeeling» have arrived – and meanwhile also some very lovely reviews from la belle France.

Today was sunny and warm, full of butterflies and bees. Hard to imagine that one year ago, it was so cold that there was ice floating in the port of Konstanz (which rarely ever happens).
At that time, I was musing about Katya, who knows to read the ice, and her brother Grischa, who has a special sense for wind and weather, both setting out from nineteenth-century Russia to make their fortune in the world.
One year later, while spring is settling in, a bit more each day, the outline I wrote in those freezing days is about to become the first volume of their saga.

Writer`s Sunday

Sunday with Katya and Grischa on their respective ways through the northern seas. Among other places, in Tromsø, in those days a little backwater of a port.

A Question of Perspective

When you turn a stormtrooper upside down, you get a friendly snowman.

To me, that´s the essence of creativity: To see things from a fresh perspective. To discover the unexpected.

One for Beauty, One for Fun

Two new Ganeshas got to travel home with me, in order to watch over new manuscripts and new ideas here and to remove any obstacles on the way.

Pure Poetry

Poetry at every corner – that´s what I found yesterday in La Orotava here in Tenerife.

As romantic as it gets.

Lucky Day

When you´ve finally managed to get to the supermarket after a hellish long day, sulking at first because your favorite sushi is (naturally) sold out at this hour – and then you stumble over salak. Resembling the scaly skin of a snake on the outside (therefore also called snake fruit), a garlic bulb on the inside, they taste like a mixture of not quite ripe hazelnuts and pears.

I‘m absolutely crazy about them and I even mentioned salak in my «Fire Island» novel. Usually, they‘re nearly impossible to get around here – but: Salak. Today. In the small supermarket around the corner.

Abstractions

Structures, parallels, symmetries and accidental patterns, found on Mainau Island today.

A Voyage of Discovery

250 years ago today, James Cook embarked on his first circumnavigation aboard the Endeavour. A voyage of exploration in search of botanical, astronomical, medical and last but not least geographical knowledge that made history and changed the world. An adventure that had already fascinated me since I was a teenager when, at 23, I started working on the manuscript that eventually became my debut novel some years later.

Nathaniel Dance: Captain James Cook (1728-1779) via Wikimedia Commons

All this time, I dreamt of visiting the spot in Hawaii where Captain Cook met his violent death in 1779. A dream that came true four years ago in Kealakekua Bay, when I swam over to the monument erected in his memory.

Category: Writer’s Life