Welcome to my webpage, which unfortunately for you, dear English speaker, is for the most part in Swedish. But – since Google Translate is the alternative to my somewhat poor English - I thought I’d share some of this page’s contents with you anyway.

Becoming an author

I started writing at the age of four, and ever since I have been nurturing the dream of writing novels. I gave it my first try at 18, which failed miserably when publishers didn’t see my true genious. Five years later, I was thoroughly humbled and more aware of the hard work that is in fact required when writing a novel.

The breakthrough for me came when Piratförlaget, a well-known Swedish publishing house, arranged a contest called Bok-SM, Swedish Championship of Books. I assigned my latest book script to the competition, and only a person with a life long dream can imagine my feeling of surrealism when I actually stood there holding the first prize – a contract for my novel.

This could have been the high point of my writing carreer, but the publishers of Piratförlaget told me that they now had an interest in me and my future novels and wanted to keep working with me. As a result, my second novel In the deep blue sea hit the market in march 2011 and the third is on its way. I feel tempted to say that this was something I could have never imagined, but that would be a lie. I have been imagining it my entire life.

My writing

My agent (Pontas Film and Literary Agency) once wrote to me that I surprised them. “Your books are real novels. Real, brave novels.” I think about, when I try to explain my kind of storytelling, that I never thought I was being brave.

A reoccuring theme in my books and in everything I’ve ever written, is the sense of self. The need to be who you are, versus the forces trying to stop you. This applies, I believe, to every single person on this earth, and that’s part of the reason why my stories are so different from each other. A force that big is something that covers all sorts of lives and situations, and I get tempted to write about all the corners.

My own struggle with identity and self-expression started when I was just a child. Some people would say I was a little girl with very specific interests, others will be more frank and call me a nerd. In my early teens I discovered that I liked girls, and the struggle with identity and self-worth got deeper. And stronger. At 19 I decided to live the way I needed to live, and my whole life opened up like a flower. The inspiration for my stories can come from just about anything, but my deepest connection to my novels stems from life experiences like this. If this is what compelled my agent to call my stories brave, I would like to say that there are quite a few brave people in this world. Some of them don’t know it yet.

The novels

My first novel is called Udda, or Different in English. This is the story of three very different people, young adults in the city of Stockholm. Martin is the well-adjusted store manager who hides a shameful secret about his desires for amputee women. Lelle is his opposite, a loud, out-and-proud lesbian who doesn’t care much about the broken hearted women she leaves behind. When Martin meets Paula, a strict and proper scientist in a wheelchair, the relations between the three of them get both strained … and steamy. This book won first prize in Bok-SM 2009, with the motivation: “An open, warm and loving story about people who struggle with openness, warmth and love”.

The name of my second novel is In the Deep Blue Sea (I havet finns så många stora fiskar). This is the story about Malte, a five year old boy in a small town in the north of Sweden. Addiction and violence creates a less than ideal home environment, and the ways he tries to express himself are not encouraged at kindergarten. This is also the story of “the Watcher”, living in an apartment across the street from the kindergarten, watching the children play outside. When a blonde man approaches the exposed and angry child in the playground, painful memories start catching up with the Watcher. A novel about being a child, about opening your eyes and about making a choice.

Contact

I give lectures about writing, about my novels and about certain themes in my novels. If you have questions or requests concerning that, or anything connected to me and my work, please contact me at sara@qx.se.

For questions about novel rights and translations, please contact Pontas Film and Literary Agency at carina@pontas-agency.com