Woohoo!
We have a new publishing date for my upcoming memoir!
BEAUTIFUL AFFLICTION: A Memoir of Surviving Heart Disease, will be released September 15, 2015.
This is great news, since this gives us more wiggle room when planning the book tour that will span over three (!) continents: Asia, Europe and North America. October was a little tight, but September 15 is just perfect!
More news to come!
♥Lene
Hello again!
Just thought I’d pop in and clarify the colorful round buttons up in the right corner of this blog. They are small and easy to miss, but these are my social media links, in the following order:
Twitter, Facebook (my author page), google+, Instagram, LinkedIn and the last button is an RSS feed (which is a way to subscribe).
So if you for example click on the Instagram button you’ll find my latest pictures from our whereabouts, currently in Sentosa Island, Singapore.
This is our weekend in pictures: 🙂
I also tweeted the peacock and got a reply from Sentosa-Island 🙂 (which you can see in the Twitter column to the right). It is amazing how the world is becoming a smaller place thanks to these media platforms, and I am super happy and excited that I get to know many of you my friends through this blog and other social media sites.
Many have subscribed to my blog posts via the e-mail list in the column to the right and this is easy: just type your e-mail address into the field and press enter! 🙂
Love you all guys, and thanks for your support!
See you in cyberspace!
♥Lene
Hello dear friends!
Long time no see! Sorry for that, we have been super busy! We have spent one intensive week in Sweden and it was wonderful to see friends and family again, which we haven’t seen for two years.
Late one evening, when I returned back to the hotel, I had an e-mail in my inbox from my publisher: the first draft of the front cover for my book!!
Actually, the e-mail contained ten drafts, but as soon as I saw them I agreed with the choice of my publisher and designer: there was one design that stood out from the rest, it really blew me away!
I’m not going to show you just yet, even though I want to, but I think I will wait for the final high-resolution copy.
Gah! Are you curious?
The designer and my publisher have created an amazing front cover, I never imagined it would look this cool, edgy and at the same time tell this much about the story. No, I am not going to say anymore right now, except that my publisher and designer are geniuses. 🙂
These pictures from Sweden are taken by my talented youngest daughter with her Iphone and I love how they capture the cold winter air and the powdery snow.
Today we landed in Singapore again and after sleeping for seven hours straight, I curled up in a sunbed by the pool. Phew — Gothenburg in January is cold!
See you soon and wishing you a great weekend!
♥Lene
This has been an amazing, exciting, interesting year for me, full of learning opportunities and new adventures.
Today I sat down and made a list of goals for the next year and while doing this, my thoughts wandered to this past year and I was filled with gratitude for all of you — who have cheered me on and helped me reach this far on my journey towards having my story published.
You are the best! Thank you so much each and everyone of you for your kind comments on this blog, in e-mails and in real life! I appreciate it very much.
As you know, my story is very close to my heart 🙂 and I am excited to enter this new year when it will be published! A lot of my excitement comes from my hope that my story in some way might help someone else struggling with heart disease or some other equally mysterious or debilitating illness, as well as give heart disease some much needed spotlight. I hope to write more about this in the months to come.
So this is why I am extra grateful for every kind word, it means a lot for me personally, and helps me on my quest to raise awareness for heart disease.
Yep, it is most definitely rainy season here in Jakarta.
The week between Christmas and New Year is called “the between-days” in Swedish and are usually spent hanging around the house in your pyjamas, eating left-over Christmas food and candy, going shopping, and visiting with your friends; going to the movies or for long chilly walks in the woods.
So if you are wondering what we’re up to; this is it, except going for long walks in the woods, which we do in the malls instead, shopping at the same time. 🙂
Also, I am busy writing small texts about my upcoming book BEAUTIFUL AFFLICTION: A Memoir of Surviving Heart Disease. I am learning first hand there are good reasons why it takes about a year for a book to be released: there really is a lot to prepare! I am currently working on “homework” from my publisher due the 29th, which is tomorrow…
I have to tell you, it is almost harder writing about your book, than writing the thing itself! Imagine writing 400+ pages to tell a story and then you’re asked to sum it up in one selling sentence! And then in a short descriptive paragraph. And then pinpoint a couple of keywords describing your book! Gah! It is super-hard! Fortunately, my publisher only askes me to do my best; they are wonderful in listening to their authors and this is a good example of this. The material mentioned is actually prepared by them, but they just want my input first; what would I say about my book? I like this, because naturally, I have a lot to say. 🙂
So even though the book is not released until the fall, we are working hard to make it happen! Well, I am in my PJ’s and stuffing my face with Swedish gingersnaps from IKEA, but still working hard, he he.
See you again soon!
♥Lene
Christmas already upon us!
Here in Jakarta, where we don’t have the changing seasons to tell us Christmas is approaching, it always feels as if the holiday is standing behind a door and suddenly jumping out: ho ho ho!
We are happy we found a Christmas tree and we have filled it with Balinese metal ornaments: elephants, dragonflies, birds, butterflies as well as stars, hearts and tiny christmas trees, turning our Christmas tree into a silvery feast, reminding of snow, at least if you squint your eyes.
Today I am honored to be featured in journalist and writer Eva Karlsson’s Advent Calendar: 24 author portraits each day leading up to the 24th, when Christmas is celebrated in Sweden. Just click the link if you want a sneak peak into my office and a Q&A with me about my writing (it’s in Swedish, just warning ya). It is a wonderful Advent Calendar Eva has created and I highly recommend checking out all the amazing writers featured!
Wishing you all a happy, wonderful, sparkly Christmas and a New Year filled with Health, Happiness and Love!
Selamat Hari Natal from Jakarta!
♥Lene
Hello!
We just came back from Singapore where we spent the week, since our youngest daughter (getting big now, already 13!) had dental surgery where all her four wisdom teeth came out.
My poor baby girl! She was so brave and we tried to make the best of it, ordering a lot of ice cream from room service (doctor’s order!) and watching movies.
It was monsoon in Singapore as well, but yesterday the rain subsided so that my husband and I got an hour at the beach. We enjoyed the beautiful Siloso beach of Sentosa Island, with a view over the South Asian Sea.
I brought my Canon Powershot and took a couple of pics: just click on a picture to enter the gallery.
Thanks for stopping by and also, thank you for the many kind words last week when I revealed the new title of my memoir Beautiful Affliction: A Memoir of Surviving Heart Disease. I am so happy for each and everyone of you who took the time to tell me you like the new title and your thoughts on this.
Big hug!
♥Lene
Hello friends!
We have been working for weeks to find a new book title for my memoir.
As you know my publisher was not satisfied with the previous title The Cicadas, which didn’t do the job sufficiently of telling what kind of book my memoir is, or drawing the reader in. In addition there were too many books already out there, mostly novels, with a variation of “cicadas” in the title.
I have to confess it was a little hard for me to let go of The Cicadas, which for me captures a lot of what my story is about. But I could see the benefits of a clearer title and so we started brainstorming.
Since my story is a lot about heart disease, many of our title suggestions had “heart” in them, but no matter how we tried to be inventive, in the end they all sounded like romance. That would be misleading, so we started thinking in other directions.
I love long poetic titles, and I love short, to-the-point titles and I love titles with a twist. I have to tell you, my suggestions were all over the place! I am happy my publisher reigned me in and made me realize that a strong to-the-point subtitle would do the job of telling what kind of book this is, giving me a little freedom to work with the title itself, without using “heart”.
One weekend I immersed myself in the world of book titles, reading everything I could find on the web; articles and advice from more experienced people than me. I learned to avoid one-word titles, that are difficult to google (because everything with that word would basically come up). Reluctantly I let go of my long poetic titles, but that was my decision, many articles endorsed these also. I felt I needed something shorter to balance my longer subtitle and also something easy to tweet and talk about. So I aimed for a two- or three-word title.
One article talked about finding your book’s soul; what is it really about? I pushed away my laptop, closed my eyes, went back to my story in my mind and thought about this. What is the soul of my story? I felt I knew this, I just didn’t have the two words to describe it. I thought about the pain of all those years I didn’t know what was wrong with me, I thought about the sorrow of knowing that I was dying without knowing the cause. I thought about my beautiful girls, their glittering eyes and their laughter as they played with their dolls and how the thought of leaving them broke my heart. I thought about my husband who was my rock during the difficult years and I thought about how it is strange that life can be awful and ugly and wonderful and beautiful at the same time.
Slowly, my two-word title came to me. It felt right immediately. I inhaled, opened my eyes and wrote it down. And then the subtitle. Yes. This was it. I sent it to my publisher who replied: we have a winner!
I have been pondering it for a couple of weeks and now I am ready to share it with you.
Hope you like it, dear friends! These past weeks I have been editing the manuscript before the proofreading and reading the story again reinforced the new title for me. In many ways it captures the soul of my story.
I am grateful for my publisher who pushed me to let go and venture into new territory. Once again I learned that it is not until I let go of the old, that I can find something even better, just waiting to be discovered.
♥Lene