The sequel to A Winter Tale, Rights of Spring, was published as a paperback edition in early 2012. The cover was again done by Barbro Hagman. Great work, Babsan! Here you can read the beginning of the book.

 

Two months have passed since Charlie moved into her boyfriend Damian's posh London flat. Instead of hopping into bed with men for a living, the enterprising young business student is now fully concentrating on her studies. But before romance makes it all too cosy for comfort, a new challenge knocks on the door: six weeks of practical training at the consulting company of Damian's brother. Soon Charlie is busy juggling cluttered project files, uncomfy work clothes and annoying colleagues. All under the inscrutable eyes of the company director, with whom she shares some steamy history. Also around is Blake, sculptor extraordinaire, with a habit of alienating even the most patient of boyfriends. And just who is the dashingly handsome Contessa, the only woman in Blake's self-centered universe? From the City of London to Manchester's art galleries and Edinburgh's five-star hotels, spring is in the air and the season is claiming its rights.

 

The novel has 283 pages. It costs 14 € (including postage) and can be purchased via e-mail catharmaiden@gmail.com.

 

Sandra Schmit: Rights of Spring. Münster: Edition Octopus, 2012. ISBN: 978-3-86991-469-5.

 

 

A re-edition of my first novel, A Winter Tale, was published in 2009 by the Luxemburgish publishing house ultimomondo. Here you can read an excerpt from the book.

 

It's the story of Charlie, a young London-based business school student, who earns her living by occasionally hopping into cars with men. Smart, enterprising and with a keen understanding for the needs of her customers, Charlie has built up a solid client base over the last two years. But just a few weeks before Christmas, she meets three men who each want more than just her usual services.

 

There's Gerald, a successful businessman with a disturbing obsession for his teenage daughters ... Blake, an eccentric sculptor whose hands are just as untiring as his tongue ... and Damian, a friendly dog-owner with the most endearing brown eyes. As Charlie struggles to make time for both her studies and her customers, she finds that love, too, is demanding a slot in her well-organized life-plan.

 

The novel has 224 pages. It costs 20 € (including postage) and can be purchased via e-mail catharmaiden@gmail.com.

 

Sandra Schmit: A Winter Tale. Sandweiler: éditions ultimomondo, 2009. ISBN: 978-2-919933-50-1.

 

A paperback edition of the novel was originally published in 2005 by Edition Octopus in Münster. I rather like its cover illustration (cheers, Babsan!):

 

An excerpt of the novel was translated for the Spanish-language literary journal Abril. I don't really speak Spanish, so I cannot judge the quality of the translation, but the lady who did the translation told me she had a lot of fun with it, so I'm confident that she did a very good job of it.

 

Cuento de invierno. Traducción del inglés: Mariate de la Torre. In: Abril 37/2009. ISSN 1018-3809. p 9-17.

 

Click here to read the excerpt in Spanish.

 

 

 

 

 

 

In: Fresh from the Fountain. English writing in Luxembourg. Eds: Anne-Marie Reuter, Jeff Thill, Nathalie Jacoby. Bereldange: Black Fountain Press, 2018. ISBN 978-99959-998-2-7. p 85-89.

 

Luxembourg's wonderful English-language publishing house Black Fountain Press released their first anthology in 2018, and also included a new short story by me. It's called Journey Home and you can read it here.

 

 

 

 

In: Saz fir Saz. Texter iwwer Musek. Luxembourg: G. Binsfeld, 2010. ISBN 978-2-87954-232-4. p 20-25.

 

Reality Check is a short story in Luxembourgish that was written for the anthology of the annual book fair Walfer Bicherdeeg. Each year, the book fair has a different theme, and in 2010 it was about music. Consequently, I wrote a short story about a karaoke evening. As there are many song lines in the story, it was a lot of fun reading (and singing) it out loud for the audience at the fair. Click here to read the story. A few years later, the story got selected for a new highschool anthology of Luxembourg literature, Lies de bal.

 

Reality Check. In: Lies de bal. Lëtzebuergesch Texter. Luxembourg: G. Binsfeld, 2014. ISBN 978-99959-2-000-5. p 94-97.

 

 

 

In: Im Reich der Mitte. Geschichte, Kultur, Arbeit und Leben in der Großregion "Saarland Lothringen Luxemburg Rheinland-Pfalz Wallonien". Saarbrücken; Konstanz: Hartung-Gorre, 2007. ISBN 978-3-86628-121-9. p 202-209.

 

Do bèscht de Platt is a short story in German about the linguistic confusions of living in a region where two major languages, namely German and French, meet. It describes the thoughts of a young Luxembourgish woman on a visit to the picturesque little town of Sierck-les-Bains in the Lorraine. Wanting to buy a bottle of the local specialty Mirabelle liquor, the French word for the beverage slips her mind. Luxembourg prides itself in the multilingual skills of its inhabitants, yet in practice this often leads to the fact that you "can only think of the right word in the wrong language". This problem is resolved when the elderly shop owner addresses her in his native Germanic dialect, the Lothringer Platt, which is very similar to Luxembourgish. There are many languages spoken in this region, but at the end of the day, people manage to understand each other!

 

The short story was published in the anthology Im Reich der Mitte, presenting the Sarre-Lorraine-Luxembourg region as a culturally diverse and dynamic area with a rich, common history. Click here to read the story.

 

 

 

 

I wrote this poem, under my internet nickname cathar maiden, for the regional magazine Am Äischdall (June 2004). It's an acrostic, meaning the first letters of each line spell out a word, in this case "Äischdall". Click on the image to read the poem.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For my literary ramblings about Iron Maiden, please visit my website www.catharmaiden.com. The texts on this site were all written in 2004 and 2005, and I'm still very, very fond of them. Maiden Heaven, Caught Somewhere in Time and my Maiden Pilgrimage travel blog are, in my very personal opinion, some of the best things I've ever written. And if nothing else, they evoke very dear memories. Then there's also another (non Maiden-related) poem that I wrote which I like a lot. You can read it here.