As well as wishing you Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, I'd like to start by thanking you for your support in 2018. It's been a wonderful year where I have increased my readership and more than tripled my book sales! I've also been able to help a lot of other authors to publish and market their … [Read more...]
A little bit of Sicily in Åland
Rosario Brancato of Belissimo Glassbar Åland islands (where we go on our summer holidays) has always been culturally a funny sort of a place. It's closer to Sweden than Finland, yet is an autonomous part of Finland. It has a rich history of seafaring; it even played a role in the Crimean war when … [Read more...]
Midsummer in Lemland, Åland
After a sleepless night when it never got fully dark, my post about midsummer in Åland is going to be a rather picture-laden one.The house is traditionally decorated with silver birch branches. The festivities started almost as soon as we settled in on Midsummer's Eve. Wood-buring sauna was … [Read more...]
Home thoughts
Being back in your home country can be equally as tricky as being a foreigner - immigrant - abroad.First of all there are all the emotions that family re-unions can ignite. Sometimes they are beautiful and lovely, sometimes an old, deeply buried resentment raises its ugly head and bites the … [Read more...]
A large small town
That is how the tourist site Visit Åland describes Mariahamn. Something lost in translation there perhaps? For me, however, this fits perfectly, but then I speak both Finnish and Swedish (spoken here) and have by now after twenty odd years even acquired the Åland accent and use the odd, little … [Read more...]
Island life
We arrived on the island of Åland five days ago now. It was late at night and we'd spent the whole day travelling, first by plane from London to Stockholm, then by ferry to Mariehamn. My mother and step-father's house where we've spent most of our summer holidays since the children were born is … [Read more...]
