A P von K'Ory

Thank you for asking, Mady Joshi. Now, this is a question I’m often asked. To be honest, my childhood was great until the age of 9 when I was “transplanted” from my family, culture and country. My parents decided to send me to England for my education beginning from preparatory school in Yorkshire. As a child of only 9 it isn’t hard for anybody to imagine how I felt in a sea of boarding school pupils who were mostly British. But there were some, like me, who came from Africa, Asia and America.

The person I initially missed most was my favourite person: my Grandma. She remained my idol to this day. I loved her courage and ability to adapt to new situations with dignity, not resignation. She taught me the values of diverse cultures which I was – so Granny – free to pick and choose from and incorporate in my own cultural mores. In hindsight, Granny is the person who made me a “world citizen”.

I came to Germany after meeting my husband in London in 1993. He was a member of the German delegation to an ILO (UN International Labour Organisation) conference in London where I was studying economics and moonlighting as an interpreter and translator. Both of us come from dynasties with a fourteen-hundred-year-old combined continuous homogeneous history. Amid fierce familial opposition from both sides of our families, we nevertheless got married so I moved from London to Hamburg. Apart from Kenya and Uganda in East Africa, both our families have large extended families in Norway, France, Spain, Greece and Cyprus. We mostly live in Germany, have frequent stays at the family home in Burgundy, France, and have homes in Greece and Cyprus for holidays and get-togethers with the other family branches.

I believe I could also connect this side of me back to my Granny. She taught me much that made me resilient, open-minded and sensitive to those who are less empowered or not as socially blessed. She taught me that certain privileges are not bought from the supermarket any more than someone could buy their preferred gender; they’re bestowed by Creation’s vagaries. Therefore someone worse off than I am didn’t choose their lot in life any more than I did mine. So it is my duty to assist. I started the Akinyi Christkind [Christ child] Organization to help women and children back in Kenya but also in Europe where some African women arrived all blue-eyed only to find that the society they thought was full of Godliness, love and caring for others actually turned hateful and physically aggressive to them.

Some of these ladies came believing they’d found the love of their lives only to experience anything but love with their partners. Most of these women and their children tend to blame themselves and try to hide their suffering from everybody including family members back in Africa as well as the authorities in their European countries of residence. It is a great help for them to know they’re not alone and above all else that they’re not to blame. My large-hearted voluntary team at the Foundation works with me tirelessly to make these women learn that asking for and receiving help when one needs it, is not something to be ashamed of. We also make it our duty to see that African children who are gifted but come from poor families get to go to school and afford the books, pens and uniforms. The greatest joy and reward is seeing them excel and walk away with college and university degrees.

The Proposal leans heavily on the story of my husband and me when we had to face our families and tell them we had decided to be husband and wife with or without their blessings. The editor-in-chief at Cook Communications USA read the story and encouraged me to send it infor the competition. I knew it was an unusual story but I didn’t know it would make it all the way to London!

Don’t tell anybody about this, but I feel greedy. Yes, I feel like, OK, so where’s the Nobel now? The Booker Prize or the Pulitzer? Come on!

Definitely romance. In all its forms and shapes as long as it is between earthlings on Planet Earth. I guess that’s a side of me that’s so ingrained I can’t shake it off. I have author friends who write paranormal and sci-fi romance with amazing worlds of humans and beasts and I’m awed at what they achieve. But I do know that – at least for the time being – I’ll not be able to successfully venture into those genres. On the other hand, I got so irritated by certain directions of the erotic and erotica genre that I jumped right in and invented my own brand and patented it: ©Sophisterotica. That’s what the Golden Shana series, now 3 books in, is about. I love writing the emotions and graphic sex. But I skirt around the “pain stuff” – as I call it – and instead dwell on psychological sexual sword-clashing. That’s what gets me going, what I’d love to read and I hope to gain more readers with similar inclinations. Otherwise I write psychological thrillers. I guess I’m a bit of a mind-over- body person.

As mentioned above, the purely personal aversion to the “pain stuff”. I mean it in all its totality whether physical or psychological humiliation of or by a partner. I guess if I can’t personally accept the stuff, I can’t dole it out either. So to write about it just because it’s booming currently would ruffle my feathers. I’d feel like I’m cheating my readers who I want to share my joys and sorrows with. I write what I love and want to share with others.

So Golden Shana is my first foray into the world of erotic but with my own personal touch and brand: ©Sophisterotica. I don’t have Dominants and Submissives; I have ®Domristocrats and ®Subristocrats. ®Domris and ®Subris. I also veer away from rich man/poor woman basically because I reject the idea (perhaps thinking of my own children) that girls/women are the ones to be dependent and vulnerable. I’m also convinced that there are dominant men who want super-strong women. Or, to use the words I put into Roman’s thoughts: “Weakness will seek and find a spineless woman to abuse. ©Domristocracy will seek and find a warrior goddess with more balls than any crop-wielding jockey who mistakes a woman for a racehorse. A woman who is a challenge to bring under my command.”

I have to admit that I’m the sort of writer who wants to share stories with my readers, not just give them something I wouldn’t want myself. So Loyana is also a character chiselled from my own life’s experiences.

She’s half Kenyan of African descent (we have all sorts of folk in Kenya who are Kenyans since the 19 th century), half Swede. Her Luoland mother is just about saturated in her cultural mores and has to raise Lo and siblings in a multi-cultural atmosphere that proves volatile and near fatal once, when Loyana’s mother gets her “initiated into womanhood” behind her Swedish husband’s back. Loyana symbolizes the situation of many modern children born to interracial and intercultural parents. I definitely wanted this story told from first-hand experience and discussed the Bound to Tradition Trilogy at length with my husband. The Bound to Tradition Trilogy also happens to be the books that won me international awards and prizes.

I think they do browse to please me. It’s my husband who shares my love of all things book-sy! And our youngest grandson who loves me reading him children’s stories over and over again, his blue eyes twinkling. He’ll be the next bookworm in the family. His older brother, seven, is all electronic devices and video games.

That’s not an easy question to answer because the readers always amaze me with what impresses or touches them most in my writing. Like in almost all my books, Secret Shades Revealed, the sequel to Secret Shades Aroused, is themed on diversity and all the joys and sorrows that abound in multicultural and interracial relationships. One of the best praises I’ve received was from an Australian reader: “An Intelligently written and wondrous story of enduring, powerful love through heart- wrenching lows to cloud nine highs. I came away with nuggets of insight and life lessons. Thank you author.” ~ Kristy Marian. Is there a higher compliment to an author than a reader saying they came away with something valuable to them from reading the author’s works?

Here I can only talk for myself because writers are a very varied species. Some can only write in quiet isolation, others want some heavy metal music screeching in the background. Whatever work atmosphere is conducive to them will be their optimal work-life and personal-life balance. I retreat to my office for hours of peace and quiet to write but like to know that the family is somewhere in the house. I never could listen to music while I write, especially music with lyrics – it distracts me. But when I get stuck with that plot or that protagonist/antagonist who won’t back down to my commands, I leave them and join the family or go for a walk. I usually find the solution with which to return to my work.

I think success is relative for me as a writer. It takes me a full year or more to write a novel (all of them 100+K words each), longer to write my nonfiction because I need even more research in order to get the facts right and current. But I firmly believe that writing about stuff you personally want to write about, something you want to tackle or experience – as opposed to the (in)famous “write to market” – makes an author more authentic to the readers and thus successful. My conviction is that readers can detect the author’s authenticity as opposed to the purely “commercial” writing.

The absolute freedom to let rip with my fantasies! I can create the good and the bad, the ugly and the beautiful, wholes human worlds that are fair or unfair. Writing gives me the absolute power in what I create or observe and interpret.

I’ve just finished a psychological thriller to be published in January/February about a young woman lawyer in London, Fairuza. It has an Agatha Christie feel to it, mainly because the reader is led along until revelation at the end. Fairuza’s state of mind and memory is questionable in a murder where she is the main suspect. Not sure of her own innocence, or guilt for that matter, Fairuza is right in the middle of the murder scene and apparently is the last person to see the murdered person alive and the first person to see him dead. She stubbornly conducts her own investigations and not always without breaking the law in one way or another. The pre-order is set to start in January 2020.

I knew about AllAuthor through a fellow writer with whom I exchanged books for honest critiquing and reviews. I was motivated by the uncomplicated registration requirements. In the meantime I’ve recommended the website to other writer friends such as Barbara Russell.