A couple of years ago I had a surprise. A very dear Australian friend, who has read all my novels, sent me a lengthy letter. I never thought what he might have in mind. When I began to read his letter, I realized that he wanted me to write another novel. He let me know in detail that he made friends with three brothers, Austrian immigrants, who had originally settled in Indonesia and loved their life there until WWII erupted. My friend told me how much he liked these brothers, three very musically talented middle-age Austrians who lived in their youth near the Hungarian border. They loved playing Hungarian music in Sydney’s cafes and restaurants and later in the famous Sydney opera house complex. When the boys were teenagers, the parents decided to immigrate to Indonesia not long before the great War erupted in Europe and spread all the way to the far East. Indonesia was hit very hard when the Japanese military invaded the country. The three brothers were lucky to escape to Australia toward the end of that World War. Even though they were incarcerated for some time near Jakarta, they were ultimately able to get on a military ship heading for Australia, and luckily their ship was not sunk as other were by the enemy.

Almost at the same time another friend of mine of Dutch descent, she was my book club pal until recently, told me one evening about her parents who had decided in their youth to immigrate to Indonesia. They were newly married then, were both born in Holland and got an itch to live in Indonesia that the Dutch had been governing for almost 300 years. The father was very anxious to go and very fascinated with Indonesia, a country, called an Archipelago, that is made up of some 17,500 islands of which 6,000 are inhabited. Many of them are tiny islands but there are huge ones like Java, Sumatra, Sulawesi, Kalimantan, Maluku and Papua, as well as smaller, idillic ones like Bali

Having traveled to different parts of the planet, I suddenly felt that I needed to travel to Indonesia. I knew that the Dutch had been pushed out and that Indonesians ended up governing their own country. I was just about to go to Indonesia last year when I heard that two young Australians, who had been caught with drugs while traveling to Indonesia 10 years ago, were about to be executed after having been in jail on Bali for 10 years. Australia was in uproar and trying hard to get their two citizens back to Australia. I then thought it was not a good time to travel to that country which still used executions for drug offenses. At the same time, besides the two Australians, at least twenty other people in Indonesian jails were also executed.

Now that things have calmed down, I know that I will still travel to Indonesia. I have read too many books and stories about that country and I’m fascinated with it. I have already studied what happened in the 1940s when the Japanese invaded Indonesia. It was horrifying what went on during the period of their occupation. But I won’t write until I have made the visit to get a feeling for the Indonesians and their fascinating country.

I am an author, and my name is Uta Christensen. Though I was born in Germany, I spent most of my life in other countries—Ireland, New Zealand, Australia and the United States. I have been in love with the United States since my childhood. When I saw a documentary movie at an early age called Traumstrasse der Welt (Dream Highway of the World), depicting California’s Highway 101 from San Diego to Alaska with its nearby natural wonders, I was totally enthralled by that beautiful far-away country. And, miraculously, I ended up there. It was in California I earned my university degree in English and German literature. I have been fond of literature since my childhood, starting off with Russian novelists, and have been reading ever since. I was also fond of writing but didn’t start my writing career until the early 1990’s. My first book, my father’s memoir was published in Germany in 2005. The memoir was written in German for the benefit of my father who never learned to speak or read English and never left Germany. My first novel Into the Unknown has not been published. In 2009, my second novel Bed of Roses, Bed of Thorns was published in the U.S., and my fourth novel Tough as Fine Silk, Escape from Beijing was published in 2011. My fifth book, the novel Caught, Surviving the Turbulent River of Life was published in January 2015.
All my novels are based on true stories. I think of the true story a novel is built on, however short, incomplete or fragmentary it might be, as the novel’s seed. It is when the imagination comes into play while writing that the seed begins to sprout, grows, matures into a tree, begins to bloom and eventually bears fruit. I always hope that it will bear fine fruit.

When I’m in the process of writing, I try to stay disciplined. Being a morning person, I write every morning for several hours, except Sundays. My whole being is dialed into this schedule. What I love to write most are family sagas, coming-of-age stories, China and Russia related stories with historical backgrounds, and I also write love stories with historical backgrounds and with some surprising and thrilling aspects. I find writing fiction very fulfilling and artistically challenging, but I hope it will not become an obsession of mine and prevent me from engaging in other experiences.