ABOUT ME
I was born in Germany and lived in several cities in Germany, as well as in Berne, Switzerland and San Francisco, California, before immigrating to Canada in 2010. Since then, I call Kitchener, Ontario, home.
I have a degree in Business Management, a Master's Degree in Environmental Sciences and a PhD in Education. I have worked as a naturalist, teaching assistant, public relations manager, multimedia course designer, an advertising and marketing assistant and owned an English bookshop in Hannover, Germany. For the past fifteen years, I have been working as a freelance writer for a German text book and teacher resource periodical publisher.
I have always been an avid reader, much to the dismay of my mom who once caught me reading a book while riding my bike home from the library ... But I never really wrote anything. It all started on a dreary November day in 2007, when I stumbled across NaNoWriMo (nanowrimo.org) - a creative writing challenge to put down 50,000 words in 30 days. I tried it and was hooked from then on.
I dove into writing mysteries since they are one of my favourite genres. German publishers, who I approached, liked the manuscripts I sent and offered to publish my books, but either only once I'd move back to Germany (so that I'd be available for in-person promotion) or only as e-books. I declined the offers and decided that self-publishing was the right way for my books.
Random facts:
- I collected sand from all over the world, before I moved to Canada. I had quite a considerable collection with samples from remote places like Ascencion Island in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean or Devil’s Bath in New Zealand.
- I climbed Mount St. Helens, an active volcano in Washington state.
- I shook hands with Bill Clinton while he was the U.S. president.
- I got my first pet at age 26 – a dwarf hamster named Clooney, because his grey temples reminded me of George Clooney.
- This one is a shocker: Beer isn’t my favourite drink and I don’t like soccer very much … Good thing I don’t live in Germany anymore :-).
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