The story.

Writing has always been a topic in my family. My great-grandfather's German books were in the attic, but as a dyslexic I didn't consider writing to be my thing for a long time. At school I actually wanted to take math as an advanced course, but the course was overcrowded. Because of my surname "Wedekind" I was way down on the list - and since students from both the top and bottom were selected to change courses, I had to go. So I ended up in the German advanced course involuntarily. What initially seemed like a setback later turned out to be a stroke of luck: I got good grades in my high school diploma, including in German. This little twist taught me that unexpected changes often open up new opportunities - and that flexibility is important in both small and large things.

After I finished school, my mother gave me a book about Australia. I started reading it on the plane on the way down under, but it didn't really inspire me. I spent the next year in a van with a friend, living and traveling around Australia and collecting my own experiences. We bought two small laptops and started writing our own book about Australia - a version that would be better and more inspiring. Full of enthusiasm, I called my grandmother from a phone booth and told her that I wanted to be a writer. But the book never came to fruition.

In the years that followed, I wrote down my thoughts every now and then while studying psychology and surfing. The dream of writing a book remained, but it was put on ice.

Then, years later, the opportunity came that I had never dared to dream of: Gräfe und Unzer Verlag offered me the opportunity to turn my loose script into a real book. And this time I seized the chance.