Author Ingrid Anders

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No, it is a work of fiction. I did live in Berlin for a year and even interned for the German Bundestag, which is where I got the idea for the novel, but my actual experience was not nearly as silly, ridiculous, and entertaining as Kat's. Plus, my parents have been bringing me to Germany regularly since I was a small child, so I was not caught off-guard by German culture and customs. But one day I got the idea that it could be pretty funny to make up a character that had never traveled at all and send her to do the same internship. So the novel is certainly based on my real experiences, but drastically exaggerated, inflated, overstated, embellished, embroidered, manipulated, maneuvered, man-handled, perjured, perverted, contrived, falsified, and, at times, outright lied.

No, I didn't get the idea for it until after I had returned to the States. I was living in Washington, DC when I started to write it. When I was about half-way through it, I moved to Taiwan to teach English and finished it there. The experience of moving to Taiwan, which was a completely foreign country to me, definitely helped me capture Kat's shock and awe at moving to Germany.

My biggest literary influence is the late, the great, former Penn State professor, Joseph Heller. His novel, Catch-22, is the most fantastic (some have called it spastic) masterpiece of literary and logical gymnastics that I have ever read. I have read it more times than any one person should ever read any one book in any one lifetime. It amazes me how he bends and twists the English language and traditional thought patterns to hilarious effect, a technique I have tried to emulate in my own writing. I will keep reading Catch-22 over and over again until his style becomes second nature to me.

Other favorite writers of mine include Dr. Seuss, Shel Silverstein, Roald Dahl, Kurt Vonnegut, Dave Barry, German author Thomas Brussig, and I would be lying if I said that I hadn't been more than a little inspired by Matt Damon's writing of Good Will Hunting. Or maybe it's just because he's hot. Tough to say.

It would be a dream-come-true to publish more novels. I definitely see Kat Vespucci as a series. I've already begun drafting Kat Vespucci and the Renegade Province, in which I send her on an adventure to Taiwan. Whether this second project comes to fruition will all depend upon if I can make my money back from publishing the first one. I would love to send Kat on future adventures around the world and see how she does. Like I said, it will all depend on the success of the first book ... so if you want more of Kat, spread the word!