In a small town with forests, ironworks, two hiatuses and one diphthong in it, which was called Georgsmarienhütte, lived my past self by the name of Stephan Pohlmann. While I consider myself still very much alive, I have since moved to Scotland, from where I am hereby introducing myself to the internet.

My home town is in Lower Saxony, in the northwest of Germany, an area best known for the Teutoburg Forest, which used to be smiling at me through the window of my room. That might actually be why, for the most part of my time there, I ended up devouring books with extensive woodlands in the script, be it the forest of Fangorn, the primeval forests of Nordic and Celtic mythology, Birnam Wood, the Forest of the Carnutes (explicitly in the Asterix series), or Sherwood Forest.

I did my bachelor’s degree in what we so cryptically called “European Studies”, investigating laws, politics, literature, languages and culture of the European Union and its nations. Questions of nationhood and how literature branded these nations became my speciality, a further focus lay on Scotland and Ireland. Effectively, I did European politics combined with Anglophone language and culture, a combination that has risen just a tiny little bit in significance and media coverage during the last months. I might have contemplated going into politics, however I somehow must have found myself to be either not disillusioned enough or too idealistic for the job when, instead, I decided to dedicate my future life to influencing fictional worlds.

By autumn 2015, after an internship at a literature centre, I had made up my mind that it would have to be publishing. Furthermore, seeing that I spent the two previous years doing research on Scotland, I figured it would be about time to finally spent more than a holiday there. I found Stirling University, stopped looking for something else, and so far have not regretted the decision.

I am here to stay for a while, at least until I can finally understand MacDiarmid’s A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle. For the distant future, I would say that I will utilize my not-too-bad command of the German language and go into copy or translation editing on the German or UK market, but preferably in the intersection between the two. And regardless of how Jon Snow will be treated by the following A Song of Ice and Fire novels, I would like to prevent him from the most horrible fate of all; having his name translated even one more time into “Jon Schnee” for the German books. That is cruel. Moreover, I still very much like the idea of putting ideas out there. But right now, I am absolutely open to the possibility that these ideas might be about The Very Hungry Caterpillar; how to make proper Scottish shortbread; the next inspiring crime-solver; Bernd the Bread; the next forestal fantasy publication or whatever people will be wanting to read in five or ten years.

Feel free to find me, on Twitter and LinkedIn, either worthwhile connecting with or rather uninteresting.