“We had to call them Soviets, not to anger the large bear next to us.”

HELENA HALME is a self-published author of contemporary fiction. She is the Nordic Ambassador for the Alliance of Independent Authors. Helena has written two box sets, the Nordic Heart series and the Island series. One of her recurring themes is displacement and the human condition, isolation and discrimination. Her book Coffee and Vodka reflects her own experiences of displacement as a child when moving with her family to Sweden from Finland - an experience which would in some ways prepare her for life when she moved to the United Kingdom as the wife of an Englishman in the Royal Navy.

Helena’s writings are all based on life experiences and those of situations around her. She is a creative and believes you need to be near people, and live in creative areas to write. In the self-publishing world marketing is such a big part of the process and she believes, “you ignore it at your peril… being self-published is hard work, you run a small business, you have to think of market forces.” She laughingly adds,

“We are vampires don’t forget.

We suck the life out of everybody we know,

And, our own.”

In our podcast chat, Helena reflects on being Finnish and growing up in Finland, a country bordered by Russia, Sweden and Norway.

“We had to call them Soviets, not to anger the large bear next to us.”

She misses Finnish rye bread and herring marinated in spices.

Helena hates running but it does bring inspiration and can help her to work out plot lines.

“My Achilles heel is that I can’t churn out books to a template.”

To find out more about Helena go to: https://helenahalme.com

Helena is also a self-publishing coach: https://www.selfpublishingcoach.co.uk/

To BUY her most recent books go to https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09924KFBD

To find out about your podcast host EMMA you can go to https://www.travellingthrough.co.uk/

A big thanks to MARISKA Martina at https://www.mariskamartina.com/ for creating our wonderful podcast jingle!