Bookpleasures.com welcomesas our guest author, Paullina Simons, whose books have been published in over 23 countries, have sold millions of copies, and have been on many bestseller lists around the world.

She was born and raised in Leningrad, USSR. In 1968, her father was arrested for protesting the Soviet Union’s invasion of Czechoslovakia and spent the next five years of his life in the Gulag prison camps and in exile.

In the mid-seventies, Paullina and her family managed to leave the U.S.S.R. and immigrate to the United States. While growing up in Russia, Paullina dreamed of someday becoming a writer. Her dreams were put on hold as she learned English and overcame the shock of a new culture.

After graduating from the University of Kansas and various jobs including working as a financial journalist and as a translator, Paullina wrote her first novel Tully. Through word of mouth, the book was welcomed by readers all over the world.

She has since written twelve novels, a memoir, a cookbook, and two children’s books.

Paullina has lived in Rome, London, and Dallas, and now lives in New York with her husband and half of her children.

THE TIGER CATCHER, Paullina’s first book in the new End of Forever Trilogy, was published in May 2019. A BEGGAR’S KINGDOM, Book Two, was published in August 2019, and the final book in the trilogy, INEXPRESSIBLE ISLAND, will be published in December 2019.

Norm: Good day, Paullina, and thanks for participating in our interview.

What do you consider to be your greatest success (or successes) so far in your writing career?



Paullina: There are two: First is the publication of my first book, Tully. That was the moment I had realized my lifelong dream. And the second success is ongoing. It happens when I get a letter, or a customer review, or talk to a reader who tells me what my books have meant to her or him.

Norm: What do you think is the future of reading/writing?

Paullina: I’m not entirely sure. There have been many changes in the twenty-five years I’ve been a published writer. I am going to keep trying to write the kinds of books that I myself would like to read, stories that pack an emotional punch and stay with me.


Norm: What makes a financial journalist and translator want to become a novelist?

Paullina: Actually, it’s the other way around. I always wanted to be a novelist. I just had to pay my rent until I could be one full time.

Norm: How long have you been writing? And how long did it take you to get your first major book contract?

Paullina: I have been writing professionally for over twenty-five years. It took about three months from the time I printed the manuscript of Tully to send to agents to the moment one of those agents called me and said that the very first publisher we sent Tully to wanted to buy it as a launch novel for his new imprint.

Norm: What advice can you give aspiring writers that you wished you had received, or that you wished you would have listened to?

Paullina: Write from your heart. Write what you feel, not what you know. Write a little bit every day. Move yourself forward in your work, a sentence, a paragraph, a page at a time. Keep a journal. Write long hand on smooth paper with a beautiful inky instrument. Write your first book; everything follows from that. Trust your story. Don’t second-guess what other people—publishers, readers—want or expect. It won’t always mean success, but it does mean you will have written a truthful story.

Norm: Which of your novels would you like to see made into a movie?

Paullina: The End of Forever novels into a long-form television series. The Bronze Horseman books into same. The Bronze Horseman would also work well as a standalone film.

Norm: What would you like to accomplish as an author that you have not?

Paullina: I would like to be able to tell a complete and meaningful story in 240 pages, the size of The Great Gatsby.

Norm: What did you find most useful in learning to write? What was least useful or most destructive?

Paullina: Useful: my ability to remain in one place for extended periods of time, completely focused on one thing. It’s not great for living a balanced life, but it’s essential to the work I do.


Destructive: The Internet. It is a time vampire, an attention vampire, a work vampire. The longer you’re on it, the more things you realize you need to look up. It seduces you into believing it’s only there for your inspiration and research. It sucks the workblood right out of you. On the plus side, I knew the precise layout of a Nazi labor camp without having to travel all the way to Germany. However, the amount of time I spent on the Internet looking for that prison and for other, barely related, things, it would’ve been more time-effective to fly to Berlin and back.

Norm: Do you write more by logic or intuition, or some combination of the two? Please summarize your writing process.

Paullina: I write from the heart, I write from the demands of my characters, but during revision and in order to tell my story the best way I know how, I must also adhere to the rules of storytelling and language, and these are dictated by precision and logic.

Norm: What would you like to tell us about your End of Forever Trilogy?

Paullina: That it’s heartbreaking and passionate. That it’s full of adventure and suffering and joy and deep friendship and love and grief. That in my view, Julian Cruz is one of my most profound unforgettable creations.

Norm: What do you hope will be the everlasting thoughts for readers who finish the trilogy?

Paullina: “I wonder what else Paullina Simons has written, and where can I purchase it right now?”

Norm: What projects are you working on at the present?

Paullina: I have four I’m actively thinking about. A return to Lily and Spencer from The Girl in Times Square. A return to the world of The Bronze Horseman. A Great Depression/Great Terror love story in two or three books. And a World War II adventure/thriller/love story set in Belgium.

Norm: Where can our readers find out more about you and your books?

Paullina: You can find me on:

FACEBOOK,     

TWITTER 

INSTAGRAM

MY WEBSITE

Norm: As this interview comes to an end, what question do you wish that someone would ask about your books, but nobody has?

Paullina: “Ms. Simons, would you please hold for Mr. Spielberg?”