Örjan Persson - My books and my writing

The first book was Petrus på ubåtsjakt (Petrus goes Submarine Hunting). The beginning of the book is based on reality, the event that occurred that day on Gräskö when I decided to become an author. The family in the book are mother, father and five children, just like my own family. The story is a mystery and an adventure.
Also in Danish; U-bådsjagten

The idea of becoming an author emerged when I still was a child.

My parents read a lot. They never had much money, but they bought books sometimes or borrowed from the library. We had 20 kilometers (12 miles) to the library, we had no car and there were no buses in that direction either. Eventually, though, the library placed a box with books in our home that all the people in the village could borrow from.

I also read those books. While my friends practiced sports, I lay on the couch at home and read.
Later I understood it's important to read a lot to be able to write well.

At high school I had a Swedish teacher who didn't understand my essays at all. She dismissed my texts with: "I don't believe this really happened!" And she failed me.

My grades after almost two years in high school were B (passed) in all subjects, except in Swedish and Christianity. In those subjects I failed with BC.

I was 42 when I wrote my first manuscript. I got the idea for my first book on a holiday with the family on the island of Gräskö, in the archipelago outside Stockholm

When we came back from our vacation, I quit my job at the electric firm and wrote the manuscript. I sent it to the publishing house Rabén & Sjögren and they bought it.

Since then, I have been an author.

Petrus is the main character in the first novel, and one of the children in my fictional family. Now I decided to write four more books with each of the siblings as the main character. So this time, I choose Eva, in the book Eva, Amadeus och kuriren (Eva, Amadeus and the Courier). It's an adventure story as well, but with horses involved.

Also in German; Pferdeferien oder Die Reise nach Copenhagen.

The third sibling was Oscar. The book is about ruthless people who steal out of the nests of protected birds of prey. The book's name is Boplundrare (Nest Plunderer). After this book I was a little tired of my fictional family, so the two remaining siblings never became main characters of any books.

Räddningen (The rescue) is about how Malin saves the pony Amie and vice verse. On top of that, she tries to save the forests in the mountain foothills, the ancient Swedish forests from exploitation.
Also in Danish; Hestevandringen, in German; Die Rettung des grauen Ponys

A publishing house had announced a writing competition for the best novel about the Swedish countryside. And since I had lived on the countryside most of my life, I wrote an entry to the competition. I used my own experience as a farmer and also experience with conflicts with authorities. Nygården, Sweden (The New Farm, Sweden) won second prize and I became 50 000 kronor (approx. USD 7 000) richer!

Efter Oz (After Oz) is a science fiction, a dystopia, about what the world will look like if we continue to destroy the earth at the rate that we're doing. My grim science fiction got a lot of attention.
Also in German; Olas Disteln, and in Swedish paperback.

Underverket (The Miracle) is a story about a young guy who arrives from the burned and poor south to his father's home in the north. It's also a science ficktion where I imagined what Europe would look like if global warming and thinning of the ozone layer contiune.

Vargspåret (The Wolf Track) is about Linda and her experiences in a mountain village in Jämtland. And about conflicts and trust issues between Laplanders and Swedes. It also includes a bit about horses. I liked Linda so much that I wrote two more books about her and the problems in the Swedish mountains; Trogen intill döden (Faithful until Death and I säkert förvar (In Safe Keeping).

Also in Danish; Gabriel og mig, Til döden os skiller, For din skyld. Vargspåret is also published in Swedish paperback.

But I haven't just written books. Some short stories as well. And a few travel reports from Asia and Latin America. I have written one single poem. It had eight lines and I got 300 kronor when it was published. I have also written a couple of screen plays.

One summer I was employed as the manager for a project where three unemployed journalists and an unemployed photographer wrote a book where other unemployed people told their view on their situations. Some wrote themselves, others got interviewed by the journalists. And as editor for the book, I put the text together as a whole. The name of the book became Frihet eller gissel (Freedom or scourge?)

A small book to which I wrote the text, was Bok &Film. It's about a project started by the Jämtland County Library and FilmPool Jämtland. By adding some library books to the films that are made after the book by the same author, the idea was to stimulate children to read more.

A manuscript I have written together with the Indian author, Paro Anand. Uma Krishnaswamy has made the illustrations to the manuscript that is now being viewed by publishing houses both in Sweden and India.

A new "Easy to read" book will be published in 2011. It's also about Adam, his granddad and his friends.

The Great World Game is about Tobias who is playing a "Shoot them up" game on his computer. He disappears, literally, into the game and can hardly escape from it. In the book I criticize the violent comupter games.

But The Great World Game is my book that has sold most copies so far.

Also in Danish; The Great World Game, in German; The Great World Game, in Dutch; Wereldspel and in Lithuanian; Didysis pasulio zaidimas. Also in Swedish paperback.

The third cyber novel, Cyber Terror, adresses amongst other things how badly girls and women sometimes are treated in the third world. By now I had started spending many of my winters in India and the settting for this book is a small village on the west coast of India where I have spent a lot of time.

Most of the setting for Jag har en drakfisk i magen (I have a Lionfish in my Belly) is also India. I wanted to write about the Naxalites, a community of poor leasholders who origin from Western Bengalia. The Naxalites got fed up with being treated worse than animals by the rich land owners and took ownership over the land they were cultivating by force. But the book is also about Swedish Erika, her search for her missing mom and about bullying in schools.

With Supervirus I broke into a, for me, new genre. To write "Easy to read". That was totally different from what I had written previously. It's difficult to find a balance between easy to read and not spartan. But it was also a fun challenge! Adam's granddad gets a virus in his computer. And Adam gets a new girlfriend. It's also about incipient love and treachery. It was a fun challenge to write this novel! It's a great need for "Easy to read" in the entire world!