Afterword

A couple of years ago I was listening to one of my older music CDs, when one song stood out to me. It was “Genesis” by Mobilée. The first lines go: “I’m lying on the sidewalk with nothing in my head.” This was the exact moment Paula was born. But just the character. For a few years, she lived in my head and I tried building a story for her to live in. You might or might not expect this, but originally she was the heiress to the throne of some fantasy kingdom before war came and her parents brought her to our world in order to save her. Originally, she and Marie, her normal human friend, were to save that kingdom. But somehow, my mind wasn’t able to construct a proper storyline for this one, so I abandoned it in my draft book.

In June, I then heard about the young storyteller award and wanted to challenge myself to finally finish and publish a book. That’s when Paula appeared again and I was finally able to give her a story. The backstory of Paula is way bigger than to ever fit into this book though and in my opinion, she deserves the all the detail, not just the shadowing here. That’s why I’m thinking about writing her backstory as a separate book, maybe next year, maybe in ten years, who knows.

But this afterword is probably not the right place to talk about future projects. Right here, right now, I’m proud, no matter how far I get in this competition. I’m proud that I finally managed to finish a book and send it out into the world. I’m proud that Paula is actually the first of my characters to venture out there and greet you all, my readers. I hope this book brings as much joy to you as it brought to me. I hope some of you can identify with Marie and gain a little bit of courage to be yourself. I hope this book made you smile, even if it is just for a second, because then I reached my first goal as a writer.

Lastly, I want to thank those people, who helped me along the way of this novel. Thank you, Lisa, Annika and Georgina, who read my weird first drafts of the chapters. Thank you, grandma, for all the brainstorming and fancy ideas. Thank you, Lara and Ms. Kretzschmar, my second test readers, who helped me polish the story in content and grammar. And then, thank you, my dear readers, who bought and read this book to these last pages.

Thank you for reading.