I love libraries. I’ve been going to one, even before I could read. My mother, sister, and I would go to the only library available for public near our home, which only had Dutch books. We would borrow children books and my mother would read them at night before we slept. I didn’t (and still don’t) speak or read Dutch, but I loved hearing the stories and seeing the images on the book.

When I moved here to my current hometown, I didn’t have any job/school to attend to and I couldn’t speak this country’s language yet. But there was a big library near my house with all kinds of English books, and I went there almost every day to spend my time with the books. To have access to millions of books for free was like a dream come true to me.

Thirteen years later, I self-published my own book, Sweet Like Sugar. Last summer, when I went to the biggest and coolest library near my current hometown, I took a picture of the ‘Mystery & Thriller books’ shelf, secretly wishing that one day, I would see my own book bearing my author name there.

Little did I know then that my wish was coming true.

Two weeks before the deadline, I came across an ad of a writing competition organized by the city library. The theme was called ‘Tapahtuiko murha?’ (Was There Murder?), a crime/possible crime genre, and it was a short story (8000 words or less) writing competition in Finnish, Swedish, and English. There would be 10 winners, whose winning works would be published in an anthology book.

Having just self-published a book that falls under the same category, after panicking a moment (2 weeks?!?) I finally decided to enter it with a brand new story.

I found out that it wasn’t impossible to create a story and write 8000 words in 2 weeks. I thought that even if I didn’t make it to the winner list, I’d have one good story in my pocket for rainy days.

Imagine my pleasant surprise when I got a letter from them, saying that I was one of those 10 winners.

The best thing about this (other than having my work published) is that I also got to hear what the judges think about my writing. Their exact words were ‘Hyvällä tyylitajulla kirjoitettu kunnianhimoinen novelli’. An ambitious short story written with a good sense of style. 🖤

Other than my own family and friends, I had never had a chance to hear a review of my writing from a total stranger, so this made me realize that maybe I am not such a bad writer after all. Maybe what I’m doing, writing stories over stories, is actually worth it. And maybe it’s okay to dream big, because you’ll never know where you might land one day. 😊

The anthology book will be published next year as part of the city library’s collection.

Click here to see the competition’s result and more info about the competition (in Finnish).