My Book
I never knew that I would publish my first book while living in Albania.
Yet here I am.
On September 21st, I got to turn my lifelong dream into a reality. I published my first novel, The New Angels.
At first glance, The New Angels doesn’t sound like a story that has anything to do with Albania or self-discovery. When I started writing the novel, I had no idea what it was about or even that it would become the first full book I would write and publish.
“Every day, a new angel comes and visits me.”
That’s how the book started out in my brain - just a sentence that I had received from some greater power or wisdom, a spark of creativity that floated into my mind and asked to be revealed on a piece of paper.
A scene turned into a chapter, that chapter turned into two, and slowly yet surely, the collection of chapters became a whole novel.
In the story, young Elidana Harserind of Val-K’thor is stuck in a village she doesn’t want to stay in. She knows she’s too smart, too clever and too thirsty to learn more about the world to stay put in the village and marry the kind yet simple-minded Tahm, the local cobbler’s son.
The sixteen-year-old knows no better, having grown up in and spent her entire life in the village, and accepts her fate when her engagement to the young man is announced.
But strange things are afoot in Val-K’thor; the game is disappearing from the forest, and nobody seems to know why. One day, an angel arrives as she is working in the family field. Michael and Elidana share an instant chemistry that is inexplicable and intriguing to both the reader and heroine.
Michael’s arrival changes everything - Elidana can longer stay put, and even though a part of her longs to remain in her familiar village, things are now out of her control. Michael’s arrival heralds the beginning of an adventure that takes her far away from home, where she meets a cast of fantastical characters and creatures who will help her to try and save her village and Greater Earth itself.
The New Angels is a story that came to me as I tried to figure out my own path forward - towards a life that was more authentic, more mine, rather than one where I would be resigned to the designs of my family and community.
I see a lot of myself in Elidana, a young woman trying to balance the demands of family and tradition with the unceasing, relentless voice inside her head telling her: this can’t be everything.
I never would have guessed that my first book would be published while I was living in Albania. The demand for English-language books here is pretty low.
But at the end of the day, it’s not about where you are, but rather, what you discover along the way.
And I am grateful for what this country has given me - the opportunity to find and be myself.
The New Angels is out on Amazon as both a paperback and Kindle eBook. I’m also selling physical (signed!) copies in Tirana (feel free to get in touch if you’re around and would like one).