Earlier Lena Nilsson

This story is about Lena Nilsson in Perth, Western Australia, who loves to write stories for children. She works as a writer most days to stay in the world of make-believe because she gathers her use-by date has not passed even if the pigtails are gone. 

Writing is her greatest hobby apart from crocheting blankets for family and friends.

She prefers fantasy adventure stories with magic, and humour, sometimes with a bit of chill, but not too scary for children to read. Only enough to experience her writing style. Her focus is on concocting suitable stories for kids.

Lena grew up in Gothenburg, Sweden, during the 1950’s, and often had to provide her own entertainment. This happened mostly during long winter evenings when the snow came down in droves. With no TV in Lena's home until she was 11 years old, and with no computers or computer games, what else was there to do, but to invent stories about unbelievably sly and ugly-looking trolls. To balance it off, she also ventured into tales of pretty fairies. She loved the tiny relatives of Thumbelina.

In the evenings, during her childhood, and before going to bed, she always had to investigate. She used to dive in under the bed to find out. Was there something lurking in between the fluffy, but not so cute, balls of dust? No, nothing, so she had to continue with an Indiana Jones' search of the large and mightily mysterious wardrobe. And what did she find? Well, it wasn't the kind of wardrobe with a portal to another world like CS Lewis wrote about, or she would not have been a Citizen of Perth, but one of Narnia.
 

Can you believe it? As most kids do, she grew up and had to leave all her childhood fantasies behind. Life became too busy to dig into the writing of little snippets with no purpose. This meant, after her years of schooling were finished, she had to work. At her first employment she found the man who became her husband. They married and had three children. All that came in the right order too.
 

Then came, towards the end of the 1970’s, a life-altering event. The family left Sweden, relatives and friends behind. They migrated to Australia where all have lived happily for around 50 years. Most of this time has been in the State of Western Australia. She admits that Sweden is a fantastic country, and they do miss relatives and friends, but Australia has a lot to offer too, and beckoned seriously to be the adventurous family's new home.
 

Today, with no young children at home to look after, Lena is more than ready to write a few best sellers. Does anybody want to read her fabulous stories? Nobody knows, but that is not going to be a detrimental deterrent. Currently she is waiting for her big break. And she is not talking about broken bones.
 

Her interests, outside of writing, are reading fiction as well as non-fiction, painting, all sorts of crafts and strange phenomena. Her time playing with her wonderful grandchildren has more or less ended. They are all over 18 now. Have to wait for great grandchildren. She believes they will also be a fabuloustically fantastickous bunch.
 

To make a short story longer, she agrees that her trolls from the olden days are probably outdated today when we have modern heroes like Harry Potter, Geronimo Stilton, Captain Underpants, Edward Tulane, Artemis Fowl and other interesting and mind boggling characters. However, she only read part of the first Harry Potter story. It was so good and interesting that she did not want to become totally influenced by those amazing story lines.
 

Therefore, on advice from the little people living in her top loft, she has adopted some new protagonists, and more than one antagonist. Their names will not be released until ... well ... let's see ... maybe much later ... okay ... when ... well ... tell her about the piece of string, and how long it is first.
 

Every day when Lena least expects it, the tiny beings come up with the strangest stories including incredible, fun-filled adventures, often laced with magic and humour - just like her own life in a nutshell. As she said it, she held up the wishing wand, but to her horror, it turned into a stubby little pencil. You guessed it! It's still a normal life for Lena.
 

Phew! Right now she said the little people told her they want to go to bed.
"Tomorrow is another busy day to muck around in Lena's head," they screamed in unison.