Cecilia Wennerström

Bewildering Stories biography

to Bewildering Stories bibliography

I am actually not a writer at all, but a jazz musician, saxophone player, composer and arranger, educated at the Music Academies in Malmö and Gothenburg in Sweden. Since 1996 I also work part time as a programmer. I was born in 1947 and I live in Stockholm.

Cecilia plays saxophone in Minor Stomp

In the mid ’80s I lived in the countryside outside Gothenburg. I was making jazz pop tunes for a group called Electric Dreams. This was a very intense period in my life. To produce texts for music was difficult, but when the poems got fantasy themes, the words came easier. One morning I heard a small, distinct, clear voice in my head saying: “Seal the wind with words unspoken!” The result was a poem called “Saga of the Wood of Whispers.”

I made about ten songs with fantasy themes, and some of them were performed in Swedish Television in 1986. After that, the story of these songs seemed to end. I could, however, not stop myself from thinking of the poems. I knew that the songs held a fantasy world within them.

In spring 2002, I at last had enough time to spend. I started to investigate, inside me, what story it was that was hiding behind the songs. Thus the land Rim was created, and the novel Saga of Rim: the Land on the Rim of Time was published by Twilight Times Books in 2003. It has won the Dream Realm Award in the young adults cathegory for 2003.

It fascinates me that the world I create seems to have a logic of its own, where events and characters appear by themselves. As if it already existed. But, now then, that's exactly how I feel when I on rare occasions succeed with a jazz solo. As if the music existed in the air, for anyone to pluck.

What authors do I read? All kinds. Not too dark, though. Often YA fantasy, I'm very childish. Among my favourites are Isaac Asimov and Ursula LeGuin. And of course Tolkien.

I’ve only written two short stories so far (2004), and “Hexaflexagon 8191” is one of them. When I was about 14 years old, my brother and I made hexaflexagons of paper (when we were not reading Astounding!). I made one with seven surfaces. It was eerie when the seventh surface showed up.