About Cecilia Wennerström:

I am a jazz musician, saxophone player, composer and arranger, educated at the Music Academies in Malmoe and Gothenburg in Sweden. I have also worked part time as a programmer. I was born in 1947 and I live in Stockholm.

In the 80s I was the leader of Salamander, a jazz quintet that toured a lot in Sweden and Europe on festivals and clubs. Salamander made its debut 1981 at the Women´s Jazz Festival in Kansas City, USA. The same year, Salamander played at the North Sea Jazz Festival with such a success that the band was engaged for an extra concert the next day, and later on  for the next year as well.

One of Swedens best jazz singers, Peo Jönis, is the leader of a ladies big band, Satin Dolls, where I have played the baritone sax for several years and also have done some arranging for the band. Satin Dolls is an entertainment band and has worked a lot in Swedish television.

Today I play in a lot of different groups, mostly jazz music. So why did I write a fantasy novel?

In the mid 80s I lived in the countryside outside Gothenburg. I was making jazz pop tunes for a group called Electric Dreams. This was a very intense period in my life. To produce texts for music was difficult, but when the poems got fantasy themes, the words came easier. One morning I heard a small, distinct, clear voice in my head saying: "Seal the wind with words unspoken!" The result was a poem called "Saga of the Wood of Whispers".

I made about ten songs, and some of them were performed in Swedish Television in 1986. After that the story of these songs seemed to end. I could, however, not stop myself from thinking of the poems. They were first written in English, and then translated into Swedish.

Finally I recorded "Saga of the Wood of Whispers" on one of my own jazz CDs, just for the record. But the ideas continued to haunt me. I knew that the songs held a fantasy world within them.

In spring 2002, I at last had enough time to spend. I started to investigate, inside me, what story it was that was hiding behind the songs. Thus the land Rim was created.

"Rim" is "Rand" in Swedish. I was a bit embarrassed, when I later found out that Robert Jordan had a main character, whose name was Rand. Well, Jordan writes so long books, so he's probably used up every name there is, anyway.

To write a book is an adventure. When my heroine Petra meets the gnome woman Kveggla in a surrealistic video shop, I first don't know who Kveggla is. In this way I create a question for myself to answer.

I often see my characters in dreams. Shazes, Ghames, the character Jadnan, and the name Winny-Vanna-Ye are all from dreams. For the story as a whole I of course have a synopsis. I know where it's going and so far (two novels) I've been writing the end of the book almost immediately. First I write the beginning, then the end, then I fill out in between, then I throw the beginning away. Something like that.

It fascinates me, that the world I create seems to have a logic of its own, where events and characters appear by themselves. As if it already existed.

But, now then, that's exactly how I feel when I on rare occasions succeed with a jazz solo. As if the music existed in the air, for anyone to pluck.

The cat, Sabina Eveningcloud, was real, however, and she was run over by the underground train, which runs over ground outside the house where I live. Never ever did a cat look into my eyes the way Sabina did. (I think her goal was to control me completely.)  

What authors do I read? All kinds. Not too dark, though. Some times even Nobel Prize winners. Often YA fantasy, I'm very childish. My favourites are Isaac Asimov and Ursula LeGuin. And of course Tolkien. I don't mind un-ambiguous characters. I don't mind ambiguous either, but I have to like at least one person in a book at least a little, I think.

My next novel is called "Return of the Lantern Bearers" and was published by Twilight Times Books in 2006. The third book in the series is called "The Demon on Ard" and is published in Swedish (March 2006).

/Cecilia