A few weeks ago, fellow writer and former expat Emily Breunig asked me if she could interview me for her blog. We ended up having a great chat session in which we talked about Maybe Baby, our characters, the expat life and a whole lot more.
One of the things we ended up talking about a lot was this idea of the disconnect and rootlessness a lot of expats feel. I’ve been an expat American for over twenty years now, so I can relate. I love the life I have here in Sweden. I sometimes miss my life in the US but I’ve been away so long that I feel like a tourist when I am there. It’s disconcerting.
I think my character Laney feels a similar rootlessness. For her it is more pronounced: she has no family to go back to the US for–her mother is dead, her father abandoned her. Her only family now is her cousin Eddy, Eddy’s mother and her Swedish boyfriend, Niklas. Is it any wonder she feels so confused about exploring the unknown? Well, that’s for you to decide when you read Maybe Baby.
Emily and I have both written about the expat experience. Her novel, A Ghost at the Edge of the Sea, is out on submission and is represented by the Levine Greenberg Literary Agency. And while Maybe Baby deals with the game of love and an expat woman at a crossroads in her life, A Ghost… deals with ghosts, parallel universes and the afterlife in modern day Shanghai.
I can’t wait for Emily’s book to finally be published. Or maybe she’ll take the plunge and go down the self-publishing road.
