Where did you grow up, and how did this influence your writing?
I grew up in a semi-rural suburb of Bremen in North West Germany. However, I had a Dad whose job required a lot of travel, so I spent a year in Biloxi, Mississippi, and a couple of months in Singapore as a child. As a teenager, I also spent a lot of time in Rotterdam in the Netherlands.
How did this influence me? On the one hand, I grew up in a very traditional and conservative area, which was also rather isolated. The last bus from the city went at 8 PM and you couldn't get anywhere without a car. On the other hand, by the time I turned ten, I'd also seen a lot more of the world than most people in my semi-rural neighbourhood and lived in countries that were very different from each other and from my home. As a result, I never really fit in, which is probably a part of the reason why I started writing.
Do you remember the first story you ever read, and the impact it had on you?
My Mom read bedtime stories to me and told me fairy tales long before I could read. Did they have an impact on me? Well, the fairy tales my Mom read to me and sometimes told me were Grimm's fairy tales in their original bloody versions as well as Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tales, which aren't exactly happy stories either. So I was exposed to some harsh stories at an early age. Maybe that's why I occasionally write bloody and violent tales.
One childhood favourite I remember is a German picture book called "Mecki on the Moon" which chronicled the beautifully illustrated adventures of a hedgehog and his cat friend on the moon. I loved this book to bits and even had a plush toy of Mecki, the heroic hedgehog. I guess it contributed to the fact that I grew up to write science fiction.
Read more of this interview.