Q: Please tell us about yourself.
I originally come from Russia, but I’ve been living in the United States for almost 11 years. I love foreign languages – I have always loved them – and I guess this is how I ended up here. I’m a mom, I’m a belly dancer, I’m a globe trotter, I’m a writer and owner of a translation company. I’m so many things in one that sometimes it’s very difficult to stay focused. But I keep persistently trying :).
Q: Tell us about your book.
In My Journey to the Ocean, four twenty-year-old girls from Russia head over to the United States for the summer. One of them is engaged to be married and she definitely knows what her life is going to be like. Or at least she thinks she does. The novel is also told in first person, from the point of view of a 30-something-year-old mom looking back over the shoulder on her younger self and that one summer of love. The book is intended to make you laugh out loud (hopefully!), read it in one big gulp and after you are done – think about a few deeper philosophical matters.
Q: What inspired you to write My Journey to the Ocean?
This book is based on real events. :) I mainly wrote it for my son, because I really wanted him to know how his parents got together. Have you ever wondered how much you really know about your parents? My son’s middle name is Ocean, hence – My Journey to the Ocean.
Q: How much time per week do you spend writing/editing your work?
I’m actually trying not to spend more than one hour writing. Plus one hour ofediting. I find that it takes a few hours longer sometimes.
Q: What are you working on at the moment?
I am currently working on a novella titled “Oh, you are having a baby? Or confessions of an unmotherly mother”. It’s going to be short and humorous novella about what they don’t tell you when you get pregnant. Hopefully, it will make a few ladies out
there chuckle and will help the new moms cope with this enormous challenge with a laugh.
Title: My Journey to the Ocean
Author: Lena Mikado
Genre: Romance / Chicklit
This novel is a memoir. Memoir gone chick lit (a bit twisted, perhaps at times too philosophical chick lit), yet still a memoir. It is a story about coming out of age, about what is happening on one’s mind when they are falling out of love and about trying to live in the present moment. All wrapped up in the sugar cone of that elusive humor of our everyday lives.
Elena knows what she wants from life. Her whole picture-perfect existence is planned out and allows for no deviation. She is engaged to be married and intends to be happy. Along with three of her girlfriends, she takes a summer trip across the ocean, to St. Simons Island, Georgia, United States. Pool parties, vodka watermelons and the eternal question – to shag or not to shag. Her whole world is about to be rock-n-rolled, and she will have to face a pretty hard choice. It all sounds like a setup for a summer-fling novel, but is it really like that in actuality, or does Miss Real Life have something more conniving under her sleeve? Are there happy endings in real life?
Lena Mikado was born in Voronezh, Russia, and moved to St. Simons Island, Georgia, USA at the age of 22. Lena received her MA degree in Linguistics, Translation and Intercultural Communication in 2005. She is the owner of a translation and localization company, writer, mummy, wife, blogger and belly dancer. And not always in this order. Lena writes tongue-in-cheek chick lit novels that are full of reflections on the matters that bother all of us every minute of our lives: love and hate, life and death, motherhood and trying to live in the present moment. My Journey to the Ocean is the first novel of the All Colors of the Rainbow series.
Links www.lenamikado.com
https://twitter.com/Lena_Mikado
https://www.facebook.com/lenamikado?ref=hl
Buy on Amazon: http://amzn.com/B00QI89NW4
Add on Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/10439778.Lena_Mikado