Thanks so much for having me, Sybil! — Like probably most or even all of you, I love books. I always did and, I guess, I always will. I’ve got way too many books — bookshelves are crammed into all available corners of my flat, while piles of books grow on several flat surfaces like chairs, my bedside table or my chest of drawers.

And since I love books, it’s only appropriate that my characters should love books, too. Especially Cissy, the heroine of Castle of the Wolf, my May release, reads a lot in the course of the novel. In addition, I gave her several characteristics of my own, most notably her love for fairy tales and the way she packs her travel chest: “Cissy carefully wrapt one of her tea dresses around her copy of the LYRICAL BALLADS so the leather-bound volume would not come to harm in the travel chest during her journey.” In other words, the most important thing is that nothing happens to the books!

And imagine Cissy’s delight when she finds out that the library in the gloomy old castle she has inherited is well-stocked and full of interesting books: given the general fairy tale theme of CASTLE, she reads texts from the era of German Romanticism for the most part of the novel, that is, texts with fantastic or fairy tale elements. Thus, she is bemused by E.T.A. Hoffmann’s tale of Murr, the tomcat with literary aspirations, or rather, with Murr’s fictional autobiography which is interspersed with another story, namely the biography of the musicmaster Kreisler. Another Hoffman tale, “Nutcracker and Mouseking” (on which the ballet NUTCRACKER was later based), inspires her to get a Christmas tree for the castle (much to hero’s annoyance!). But there are also other books to be found in the Wolfenbach library, among them a copy of the German edition of Terry Pratchett’s MEN AT ARMS. Anachronistic? Absolutely! *g*

As you can see I had a lot of fun with books in Castle of the Wolf! And, of course, I hope you’ll have a lot of fun with those books and stories, too.