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One Day This Will All Make Sense
One Day This Will All Make Sense by Katie Jansson Shahin
ebook, 318 pages
Publication date: December 4, 2014
In the three years since Emma, Human Resource professional by trade and writer at heart, moved to Los Angeles from Sweden it has been anything but smooth sailing. When she was offered a new job Emma thought she had finally found the security she’d been looking for since moving to the city of her dreams.
The bliss is short-lived as Emma struggles to adjust in her new role and environment. She fails to learn how to play by the unwritten rules and office politics of corporate America, leaving her defenseless against a new boss who soon makes it clear that he wants her gone. After having put her writing before her HR career for so long, Emma knows it was just a fluke when she was hired and is determined not to let it slip away. But she cracks under the pressure and is ultimately fired. Will she be able to dig herself out again? Or has she peaked at 27? More importantly, will she survive in the city that represents everything she has dreamt of becoming?
Voices
Welcome to The Book Bag today Katie! I have this question I like to ask authors. And I love each answer I get. Thanks for taking the time to tell is about your 'voices'.
I have heard other authors say that they 'hear voices in their head' and that is how they write their books: the characters are telling their stories. Not being a writer myself, that concept has always intrigued me.
When some people hear voices, we get them medical attention, others end up becoming writers. Does this happen to you? How do you come up with your stories?
You’re absolutely right. There are voices swirling in my head. Writers are a bit odd that way. We live in our head more than most because that’s where the fictional world and characters reside. This is incredibly important in trying to paint a vivid and believable picture. So yes, I did hear voices. But perhaps more curious was the fact that I sometimes confused reality with fiction.
Like many authors, my debut novel was heavily inspired by my own experiences. I moved to Los Angeles from Sweden in the summer of 2010 and “One Day This Will All Make Sense” depicts this journey. I am Emma and many of the scenes and events in my novel are real, but some are not. It’s a non-fiction character in a fictional world. And so many of the voices I heard, was me critiquing myself, wondering what in the world I was thinking, and wishing I had done things differently in a certain scene, only to remind myself—it never happened!
Excerpt
Not one day had passed since I had moved to LA two and half years earlier when I wasn’t grateful and aware of what city I was in. Not one morning had passed that I had driven to work, which was usually around six forty-five a.m., when my mind hadn’t gone completely quiet and at ease at the sight of Vine Street, coming off of the 101 South. I knew I was fortunate. Many young people in Sweden dreamed of moving to LA and tried so hard to find ways to stay once they made it here on a student visa. For the most part, people either got married or never found a way to stay. I, on the other hand, had gotten a green card through my dad since he’d become a naturalized citizen before I turned twenty-one. I continued down Vine Street and saw the W Hotel sign up in the sky, and a few blocks farther down I passed the bright red building that housed The Redbury hotel, with the world famous Capitol Records Building on my right side.
As I got on to the 101 North, driving ten miles an hour in Friday traffic, I wondered to myself what it was about LA that had me so wrapped around its finger. The first time I fell in love with California was when I watched The O.C. Shortly thereafter my dad moved here from Wisconsin, and I was able to go visit the place I had only seen on TV. Of course, the entire show was filmed in LA, but I didn’t know that back then. I then discovered the show Entourage, and that’s when real things started to happen inside me. I couldn’t quite pinpoint what it was. Was it the beautiful weather and the smell of freshly-cut grass all year round? Was it the wide streets you could barely cross in time before the streetlight turned red for the pedestrians again? Was it the buildings that on the outside looked like nothing more than a chunk of cement, but on the inside were beautifully decorated lounges? Was it the powerful rush I had gotten the first time I went ninety on the empty freeway at three a.m.? Or was it simply the fact that I knew I was in the same city where all the Hollywood movies came from?
While I saw all the beauty that L.A had to offer, I wasn’t oblivious to all the things that other people usually saw as the downside of moving to LA: the constant sound of traffic and honking; the fuel-filled air and the fog; the enormous city where everything was separated by insane distances; the huge freeways; the above-ground electrical lines; the cracks in the pavement left by earthquakes. I saw all those things too. But my love for this city was an unconditional kind of love—I didn’t love LA despite its flaws. I loved it even more for them. We could be flawed together.
About the author
Katie is originally from Sweden but moved to California four years ago and currently resides in the North Bay area just outside of San Francisco. When she’s not working on her writing, she is an HR and recruiting professional. Although her debut novel is not a biography, as you may have guessed One Day This Will All Make Sense is heavily inspired by her own experience moving from Sweden to Los Angeles and her life there.
Connect with Katie
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Thank you Susan! This looks great!
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