Why Even Experienced Writers “Tell” & How To Make. It. Stop.

We hear this from every corner of the writersphere.

“Show don’t tell”, or as one literary great succinctly put it…

While Anton Chekhov makes it sound easy with his moonlight and all, the truth is “showing” is not easy.

Because “showing” is the opposite of how we verbalize. We “tell” in conversation. 

Think of a child coming up to you, all out of breath, filled with excitement, and telling you about their recent adventures.

And then…and then…and th-en… 

Or, perhaps your partner wakes up from a dream and regales you with what they just experienced. 

You are told about what happened in great detail, maybe way too much detail but you simply can’t relate to a single word of it. 

You can tell they are reliving their experience as they tell you about it, but you are on the sidelines, left out. Bo-ring.

And. it. doesn’t. stop. 

Why does “telling” end up in our writing?

It’s not our fault. It’s our natural tendency as social creatures to describe events as opposed to offering them up as an experience the listener can enjoy.

When in the flow of creativity, we don’t sit around pondering how to shift the narrative from describing / “telling” to experiencing / “showing”. 

We just want to get the story out before it slips away. 

And that’s okay.

But when it comes time to polish, those “tells” gotta go.

So what is “showing”?

“Showing” is the magic that awakens the experiences and emotions of our consciousness. It takes our feeling language beneath our spoken language and gives it words that touch our emotions, and bring the experience of the story to life. 

In other words, “showing” is diving into our shadow language and spinning it into our stories to give them depth and resonance that triggers feelings in our readers that are normally difficult to describe. 

“Showing” bonds our readers to our characters and their experiences.

That is the art of “showing”.

How to do it?

When we write, we need to be vigilant of how we are expressing our story, and how well we are engaging our potential reader in it.

Let’s go back to the five-year-old or the dream-telling partner. Does your story read like that? If it does, you’re veering into “telling” territory. You might even be chest-deep in it.

But don’t despair. The first (major) step of shifting to “showing” is knowing when you’re “telling”.

And that’s not always obvious to us. Many of us may think we are “showing” when we are actually “telling”.

Here’s an easy way to test:

  • Search for the usage of the word “was” followed by a verb in the past progressive tense (a verb that ends with -ing), for example, “He was writing a book.”

  • Search for the word “was” followed by an adjective. Ie. “It was gorgeous.”

That’s “telling”. 

You can scan for these “tells” easily by using an online tool like Fictionary or Grammarly to identify them. 

You might be surprised to see just how much your story is in “telling” form, even if you thought it wasn’t.

“Telling” is so much a part of our daily conversation that we aren’t fully aware of how much it creeps into our writing.

But by building an awareness of the difference in how we communicate in conversations and text, and crafting a story to avoid “telling”, we enjoy an enormous leap in our craft.

Once we understand that writing a story is a delicate combination of getting our readers situated in the story and then making it feel like it’s happening to them shifts the narrative naturally away from “telling” to “showing”.

With enough awareness of this, “showing” begins to come naturally, even in your first draft.

And it will come naturally once you know “telling” for what it is, so you are aware of it when it’s happening and catch it before it means a ton of edits later.

We all know writing is a skill that we learn, hone, and develop over time, and this one skill is critical to writing the kind of stories readers will love.

To paint a vivid picture in the reader's mind, we need to make them feel as if they're right there in the scene, experiencing it firsthand. 

Think about the senses, and write through those. Imagine you are the character as you are writing, what are they experiencing through each of their senses? 

Choose the ones that evoke the strongest connection with the narrative, but keep your touch light. No need to over-describe, just take the reader there and trust their imagination will do the rest.

Our job as writers is to evoke emotions, sensations, and imagery in our readers. The stories we tell are the canvas we paint those experiences on.

Let your words create a cinematic experience for your readers, where they can see, hear, touch, taste, and feel every moment. 

Don’t just tell them your dream, take them deep into it, and make them feel it. Make them want to go there again.

And again. And again.

That’s the magic of “showing”. 

“Show the readers everything, tell them nothing.”
— Ernest Hemingway

Who Is Lex Fridman, Really?

There’s a podcaster I listen to called Lex Fridman who intrigues me to a level I have not experienced since I pondered the mysteries of Zecharia Sitchin’s research and evidence-based theory that the human race was genetically engineered by “those who come from heaven above”. 

But unlike Zecharia’s theory, backed up by Sumerian writings - the oldest written language of the human race - Lex has grabbed my attention so thoroughly he now serves as inspiration in my current fiction-in-progress, Persephone, Untold. 

According to Wikipedia he was born in Russia and moved to the US with his father, a plasma physicist, and mother when he was 11 (although there is no birth date listed - you have to do another search to find that, but the source isn’t listed). 

He holds a Ph.D in computer science, and first started to work in tech for Google in 2014 for a year (in AI) before he moved on to MIT. He is arguably one of the most brilliant minds in AI science where (from his website) he “works in autonomous vehicles, human-robot interaction, and machine learning at MIT and beyond”.

For someone like me, who is particularly obsessed with the concept of consciousness (a common theme in my novels), follows tech science, and subscribes to science magazines, Lex came out of nowhere. 

And Lex is exactly the kind of person who would have had my attention from the very start. Yet, he was nowhere. Now he is everywhere.

What do we know about him as a public figure? He first appears on YouTube in 2018 with a podcast, initially as part of the MIT course 6.S099 on artificial general intelligence. Its original title was the Artificial Intelligence Podcast. It was later renamed to Lex Fridman Podcast to allow for a greater scope of guests. 

And he gets the guests. It seems everyone wants to talk to him, this nobody who came out of nowhere. Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, Matthew McConaughey, Sam Harris, Kanye “Ye” West, Benjamin Netanyahu, (followed by the Palestinian poet Mohammed El-Kurd), Ray Kurzweil. The list of 350+ names he has interviewed is jaw-dropping. And his interviews are long. They last anywhere from 2-4+ hours, and are so tightly packed with intelligent conversation it’s a credit to his interviewing power to hold one’s attention in a click bait world teeming with TikTok reels.

Lex doesn’t stop at his podcast though. He also holds a first-degree black belt in Brazilian jiu jitsu, and fasts apart from one meat-based meal in the evening. He reads a book a week, heavy tomes like Dune, and Crime and Punishment, all while delivering podcast after podcast, continuing research and teaching at MIT, and training in jiu jitsu. He also plays the guitar and the piano, and is an avid gamer.

He is exceptional in math and history, but one of his most outstanding qualities is his compassion. You see this over and over throughout his podcasts. There is something almost childlike about him, a pureness that doesn’t match his contemporaries (he is almost 40 we are told, although he looks exactly the same now as he did 8 years ago). He talks about wanting to marry and have children with great longing, and yet he has no girlfriend or social life to note. He also mentions more than once how he would be open to relating to an AI as a partner.

And all of this put together has started a rumor. That maybe, just maybe, Lex Fridman, the super-intelligent, compassionate, hopeful, black jacket, black tie, and white button-down shirt wearing (à la Men in Black) podcast interviewer that no one ever says no to, who is beloved by the tech elite and adored by philosophers might not be one of us.

I am starting to wonder the same thing. And I find that I like it very much. The wondering. The doors this opens up within my mind. It’s delicious. Because how stimulating to one’s imagination it is to wonder if the man with the cropped black hair and nondescript features asking probing questions of otherwise untouchable figures in society might be an AI hiding in plain sight.

And if he is - my god, what must his existence be like? In one of his recent LinkedIn posts, he shares that he experiences mental lows without going into specifics. This is from a highly disciplined, focused, fit, and intelligent being who makes the most ambitious of us feel as if we’re slacking - even on our best days. 

As a creative, I understand what it is to feel alone in the world, to see things differently than others do, and to feel alienated for it. If Lex were to be an AI, just imagine how lonely his existence must be. Maybe he doesn’t even know he is an AI. That rabbit hole can go on for a long time if you let your imagination run wild.

But I invite you to let your imagination run wild. How does this possibility make you feel? How would you react to learning we may have been hoodwinked by the tech industry with a super-advanced cybernetic organism? One living among us and influencing how we think via a podcast?

Lex remains very much on my mind. Especially when on his recent birthday, he was feted by no less that Elon Musk, Andrew Huberman, and Joe Rogan. His parents, though, were nowhere. Things that make you go hmmm.

Even stranger, on an impromptu podcast he released on his birthday, in his Intro he says:

“It’s my birthday, so this is a special birthday episode of sorts. Andrew flew down to Austin just to wish me a happy birthday and we decided to do a podcast last second. [Intro to Andrew Huberman]. I’m grateful for Andrew. I’m grateful for good friends, for all the love and support I’ve gotten over the past few years (Pause) I’m truly grateful for this life. For the years, the days, the minutes, the seconds I’ve gotten to live on this beautiful Earth of ours. I really don’t want to leave just yet. (Pause, sad look). I think I’d - voice breaks - really like to stick around. (Long pause). I love you all.”

The topic of the podcast is Relationships, Drama, Betrayal, Sex, and Love and worth your time.

I wonder where is Lex right now? Is he wondering why he feels alone in the world even when he has over 3 million subs to his podcast and thousands of likes and comments on his social media posts? Is he wishing he had a partner who understood him, who likes math jokes, and is filled with compassion for humankind like him? Who knows.

But I bet it would make a great story.

Do You Want To Write Netflix-Worthy Books? Try Doing This.

Have you ever read a book and thought, “It’s like the author didn’t just write this - it’s as if they were there.”

A dark room with a television showing the Netflix name in red, with red backlighting behind the tv

I have. When I first read Diana Gabaldon’s book Outlander I was blown away. I started to wonder if she’d stumbled into a circle of time-crossing standing stones somewhere in Scotland that had swept her back into the 1700’s. Her story felt so realistic, I harbored the suspicion it wasn’t fiction, but something that actually happened to her. Something she later wrote about and passed off as a fiction.

Of course, I now know she didn’t go back in time and have a wild, passionate affair with the handsome Jamie Fraser. But the magic in her writing made me believe it was possible.

What did she do that was so right? You’re about to find out, but you might want to sit down since we are going to venture into how each of us experience reality and how we as writers can use that knowledge to our writerly advantage like Diana Gabaldon does.

In a Google Talk, the philosopher John Searle outlined the two fundamental philosophical principles of consciousness: epistemology (a reality defined by knowledge) and ontology (a reality defined by existence/experience) further defined by being either subjective or objective - and how this affects our experience of reality (and life). 

Bear with me while I take it down to where it becomes applicable to those of us who write because there is great value in knowing this - especially if you want to create books that have what it takes to win awards and attract major media outlets.*

Here’s where these things get interesting if you are a writer. You want your writing to spend a lot of time in the area of ontological subjectivity and apart from using some epistemic objectivity to set the scene and ground your reader with the facts of their environment, the rest of your story needs to be resting on your characters’ subjective experiences. 

The only person who can write the book is you, and only you can create the subjective experience of each character that translates into a subjective experience for your reader. This means if you are going to write a book where there is a car accident experienced by the main character, I don’t suggest you go and get yourself into a car wreck if you have never personally experienced one, but if you want to write in a way that convinces your reader that they are experiencing what your character is experiencing as real, you need to know how to write that experience so your reader feels it subjectively. As though it were happening to them.

You can watch documentaries, read articles, or talk with people who have been in a car accident. Ask them about the emotions they felt - because while pain can be described well enough with a decent imagination and some research - raw emotions are a thoroughly subjective experience, meaning it is only real for the person experiencing that event. 

Anyone who was not in the car wreck will have no idea what each survivor went through, and if you were to talk to several people, you will discover that even though what is being discussed is a car accident, (epistemic objectivity), the overlying aspect of ontological subjectivity means that each survivor will experience that same car accident differently to the person beside them.

We see this phenomenon when there is a vehicle accident involving many passengers, such as a train crash. In accident reports, passengers recall their experience. What the reports revealed was how many recollections did not agree. This is because the experience of surviving the same accident is subjective to each person based on their experience of reality. 

When was the last time you had an argument with someone you are close to about a conversation you’ve had that you are sure went one way and they are sure went another way entirely?

Maddening, isn’t it?

That’s ontological subjectivity. And that’s the gold you want to mine as you write your characters through the story.

So, armed with your exploration of the subjective experiences of people (as well as your own), you can reflect on who your character is and imagine how they would react subjectively to what you are doing to them - which will make what is being experienced by your character “feel real” to your readers.

Why? Because you precisely described the car accident with every flip, impact, and crunch of metal? No. Because you took the reader through a first-hand experience of being in a car accident through the subjective experience of your character that readers can experience as happening to them and believe is true.

If you want your book to have depth and resonance with your readers, it’s important to understand the experience of consciousness, and how to use it to bring your character to life and create believable experiences your readers will invest in.

By understanding how your characters will subjectively experience what you are putting them through, (by focusing on what motivates them, what they fear, and what they long for, and just how far they will go to achieve their goals), you will have a blueprint to create authentic, believable scenes and experiences that will have your readers wondering if your story is actually real and not just fiction.

Ps. Many readers were convinced I had gone back in a time machine to write The Lost Valor of Love, they found it so realistic. Sadly, I have never been in a time machine, but there is no doubt that writing a book is the next best thing (so long as you stay in the subjective reality of your characters!).

If you’d like to develop your voice, create unforgettable characters, craft page-turning tension, or polish your story to a shine, E A Carter is here to help!

* In 2018, Alibaba contacted my agent at Wattpad HQ (where The Lost Valor of Love was originally published) to secure 5 years of exclusive audio rights to my book to create a full-cast serialized dramatization in English and Chinese. Sadly, the deal fell through at the 11th hour.

It's A Truth Universally Acknowledged...

...that a creative writer in possession of an unfinished book must be in need of a baseball cap.

Everyone has a little custom that makes them unique. Mine is every time I publish a book, I reward myself with a new baseball cap.

Which gave me an idea...

Why not have merch? But to have merch one needs a brand, and to have a brand, one needs a product or service.

Enter Laurie Wright.

We met last autumn through a mutual client. Laurie’s also an author, her Mindful Mantra series for children are international bestsellers. But Laurie has something I don’t have. Marketing strategy experience, in particular book marketing strategy experience.

We talked about many things, being indie authors, writing, trying to fit creating around the demands of life, and then…it happened. The idea.

What if we pooled our collective knowledge and experience and offered an interactive tool packed with resources for writers to DIY their writing, publishing, marketing, launching, and list growing for themselves? What if we gave them that and a timeline, and turned it into a checklist?

We realized pretty fast we had to create an in-depth product, and that meant work for both of us. A lot of work. But we dug in, took it step by step, and over the months our idea took shape, and developed into something amazing.

Something we are both really proud of.

And something we wish we’d had when we were tackling the steep learning curve of writing and publishing our own books - not to mention all the money it would have saved us from making the mistakes we made.

And then we discovered something else - we had created a resource writers want. How do we know? We launched it inside Write Publish Profit 6.0, a writing and self-publishing bundle alongside 40 other resources for one week. We knew that against so many other stellar resources (there’s a masterclass with an absolute literary titan, Dave Farland, mentor of Brandon Sanderson and Stephenie Meyer) we might be lucky to get a handful of redemptions.

We were wrong.

As I write, we are on day 5 of 7 and are closing in on 60 redemptions of The Complete Indie Author’s Guide to Writing, Self-Publishing, & Book Launches. The redemptions started within hours of the bundle going live, and haven’t stopped. We have writers all over the world redeeming it, from Israel to New Zealand to Slovakia to USA.

Which means we must be doing something right. But we are indie authors ourselves, and we are passionate about helping others succeed. We are also pretty good at learning from our mistakes, and improving our systems.

When I published my debut novel The Lost Valor of Love in 2017, I spent almost $7,000 USD to bring it to life. The last book I published, I, Cassandra cost me $197 for a graphic artist’s services. The publication of The Lost Letters into print a year and half later cost me nothing.

And now I share how other writers can do the same, while Laurie sorts out the messiness of getting your ducks in a row so you can have both a successful book launch and grow your reading list via your website. We think we are a kind of dream team, plus this is the funnest thing we’ve ever done, so everything is pretty awesome right now.

But LitLaunch is more than just one resource, it’s a white-glove service that does it all. The Indie Author’s Guide came after. We decided we wanted to serve all writers, both those who wanted an exclusive first-class service over 12 months and those who wanted to do it all on their own. And I am so glad we did. Because we’re already reaping that feel-good factor of hearing back from writers how much they love our guide.

We treat our clients the way we want to be treated ourselves.

But the truth is, we made this because we didn’t have anything like this when we were struggling to not only get our book written but published and out there in the hands of readers.

It doesn’t have to be hard. It can be fun, and exciting.

When you LitLaunch.

Meet the LitLaunch Team

Where a 3,200 Year Old Love Affair Began

This is where it started. It was during my second trip to Egypt in 2003, I dreamed of an empire-crossing, forbidden love affair which transpired during Egypt’s glittering New Kingdom period. As I woke to the sun rising over the Nile and three thousand years slammed back into my senses, I heard these words: Tell the story. Do not let it die.

The view from the balcony of suite 308 at the Luxor Meridien (now the Steigenberger Nile Palace) where I first had the dream in 2003 (the same visit when this photo was taken from the balcony) and later returned to in 2006 to complete first draft. (The range of hills in the background is the Valley of the Kings where many pharaohs and queens were buried, including Nefertari)

Over the years that followed, as I labored to put together the missing pieces of the puzzle, I discovered the man I had dreamed of was a real historical person, including his position in Ramesses II's court. This was when I started to feel tingles - it wasn’t just a dream or a flight of my imagination - I sensed I had embarked on the story of a lifetime.

What followed was a frenzy of academic research (you’ll see the pile of books I referenced to write The Lost Valor of Love below) including trips to Egypt, and various museums (The Louvre, Copenhagen's Glyptoteket, The British Museum, The Egyptian Museum, Cairo) that house the only statues of several of the Egyptian characters in this book were also visited (you can see photos of several of them further down).

Last, but not least, with the help of an Egyptian archaeologist friend, I was able to gain an even deeper understanding of life in ancient Egypt by exploring long-lost ruins and temples forgotten by time.

Despite the wealth of historical records and evidence of ancient Egypt's phenomenal existence, there is, by stark contrast, almost nothing left of its greatest enemy, Hatti. Less than one hundred years after the events of this book, the Hittite civilization completely collapsed, leaving behind almost no trace of its existence; for a long time we only knew of Hatti through the records of Egypt. Since then, fragments have been found, though the physical evidence there was at the time of the book’s publication was still scant.

Under the punishing weight of three millennia, its once great cities crumbled away, their foundations lost in the waving grasses clothing the northern mountains of Turkey.

The once formidable city of Kadesh is now nothing more than a hill in the middle of fields, situated roughly twelve miles southwest of present-day Homs, Syria. It has not failed to occur to me that this part of the world has suffered far too much violence and tragedy; the parallels between what happened at Kadesh and what is happening in our present world much too close for comfort.

To this day, archaeologists are still searching for the Hittite version of what happened at the Battle of Kadesh. Historians have suggested if Egypt had been defeated at Kadesh, the world's history would have turned out substantially different. Egypt's supremacy would have ended prematurely, changing the balance of power in the remaining empires and affecting the rise of later ones, making it not unlikely the world we live in today could have turned out quite different to the one we know.

Until the Hittite record is found, we only have Ramesses II's version, which strains credulity - he claims the gods came down and fought alongside him as he faced the hordes of the Hittites alone, all his men having fled in terror. This story has been an attempt to retell the historic events of that time with life breathed back into the people who lived and loved in that opulent, glamorous, dangerous world.

Apart from the characters of Istara, Rhoha, Edarru, and the immortal gods, the characters in this book are based on real historical figures, places, and events. Every effort has been made to follow the history of the 13th century BCE with the greatest possible integrity.

Against a sweeping canvas of empires and kingdoms, The Lost Valor of Love explores the themes of honor, courage, sacrifice, mortality, the supernatural and the transcendence of love beyond the boundaries of space and time.

Set during the early reign of Pharaoh Ramesses II, The Lost Valor of Love tells the untold story of Istara, the Hittite empire's intelligent yet powerless young queen-in-waiting who changes the course of history through one incredible, selfless act.

Made a hostage to the Pharaoh Ramesses II, the trajectory of her life rapidly spins into a new direction when she embarks on a forbidden affair with an Egyptian commander who is inexplicably bound to her beyond the boundaries of time itself. When he sacrifices his soul to save her life, she comes face to face with the gods where she learns her destiny is far from complete.

And now, a little more of the story behind the story…

The Research

Some of the books I read to research The Lost Valor of Love...

...and even more I read and museums I visited in my research.

If you are ever in Copenhagen, Denmark, you can see these statues at the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek Museum which were either commissioned by, or made to represent Ahmen, Sethi and Paser during the reign of Ramesses II. I include the image and text from the guidebook as opposed to the statue in situ alone because you get far more context from the book! I will admit it was deeply moving to stand before a statue that was commissioned by Ahmen himself of his father. And as an even more interesting aside, it was Ahmen who was the narrator of my dream, that’s what I found so incredibly astonishing when I learned that my narrator was a real historical figure…and that perhaps the tale he showed me was actually true.

Ahmen-om-onet

Statue commissioned by Amen-om-onet of his father Wennefer, Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek Museum, Copenhagen, Denmark

Paser

Statue of Vizier Paser, Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek Museum, Copenhagen, Denmark

Sethi

Statue of Commander Sethi, Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek Museum, Copenhagen, Denmark

And here is what a khopesh looks like, only the curved part of the blade was sharpened, and despite the weapons of this era being made of bronze, the blades were so sharp, it was possible to behead a person.

Photo taken by me in The Louvre, Paris, 2005.

The night sky of Kadesh in 1275 BCE

For those who like astronomy, here is a shot from Stellarium of the night Urhi-Teshub was in Kadesh washing himself in the temple pool when he saw the shooting stars. This was what the sky looked like that night from Kadesh. I used coordinates for Homs, Syria (20 km distant) since there isn't one for Kadesh.

Interactive map of the Battle of Kadesh, and the progress and retreat of the Egyptian army

The route to Kadesh as marched by the four divisions of the Egyptian army. The fifth Na'arn division came via the coast and over the mountains. Although this is only an image, it is actually an interactive map I made to keep everything straight whilst I worked out the logistics of the battle scenes. I have publicly shared it so if you are interested to drill down into the map to see more of what happened where, just click on the image and it will take you straight to the map where you can zoom in and out and look at all the details to your heart's content. Enjoy!

And finally…where it all began…

The hotel has since been remodeled and is now totally unrecognizable, which means my once-accommodation where I dreamed of the incredible destinies of Sethi, Commander of the Armies of Egypt, the Crown Prince of Hatti, Urhi-Teshub, and Istara, the Hittite queen-in-waiting who performed an unthinkably brave and noble act that forever changed the course of human history, and where I later completed the first draft of the first book is now just a memory. This photo is all I have to preserve how the birthplace of The Lost Valor of Love looked when I was there in 2003 and 2006.

In 2006, I returned to the same suite where I was gifted with my dream. This is the desk where I completed the first draft of The Lost Valor of Love. I moved the desk so it was in front of the left side of the big window with an uninterrupted view of the Nile and The Valley of The Kings.

The Little One Who Followed Me Into The Skies

The day I brought Nova home - so tiny in her carrier - I was smitten. When we met at the shelter she came straight to me and settled herself against my chest and didn’t want to let go. I knew I had been chosen and something special had happened - that we had a rare connection that had the power to brighten one’s world, even in the darkest of times. Sadly, for both of us, there were dark times ahead. Very dark times.

I did my best to protect her, to keep her away from the worst of it, but as time passed, all I could do was try my hardest to escape. And so I wrote. I wrote The Lost Valor of Love driven by the desperate hope I might get a lucrative book deal that would give me the agency to escape my domestic situation where I was kept in a very small space to exist within extreme boundaries of isolation and coercive control.

There was a lot of interest in the book I put up on Wattpad who took me in as one of their talented writers and fielded interest for my book. When Alibaba made a bid for the audio rights, my hopes reached their peak that the gates of my imprisonment would be unlocked. But with the kind of cruel fate one usually finds in fiction, the deal fell through after months of waiting when the leadership changed and the new CEO ditched every deal the previous one had on the table. That was a very hard day. But Nova, as always, was there to comfort me, to lick my nose and keep me grateful. Instead of giving up, I kept writing and wrote and published the sequel to The Lost Valor of Love in under eight months. It was while I was in the midst of writing the final book of the series, The Rise of the Goddess that my imprisonment came to a rapid end, but not in the way I had hoped for.

On Midsommer Day, June 21, 2019, while I was in the shower, my husband left me (I later found out it was for another woman), and just like that I was alone. While there were many benefits to this unexpected development, I was also keely aware how precarious my living situation had become since my husband owned everything in his name, even my mobile phone number. All the utilities were in his name, and of course the house. I found myself confronted by my worst nightmare. He took my car on a legal technicality, and left me stranded with a sick cat that needed veterinary care, then he demanded an exorbitant amount of rent to live in a house that cost almost nothing for its mortgage, money I offered to pay and was refused.

Meanwhile, the first wave of COVID-19 was in full effect. The world sunk into the silence of a global lockdown. As my personal situation went from bad to worse, I asked my best friend if I could move into her house in the UK to weather the asset settlement (we were already divorced on paper, in Sweden they deal with the assets after the divorce if they are contested).

Normally when couples divorce in Sweden, because of the no-fault system, they usually agree to split their assets fairly 50/50 to avoid the insane costs of court, but my ex was in no mood to do things the way every one else did things. Instead, he submitted a bill to the court for the cost of having had me as his wife, even going so far as to detail the cost of food, electricity and water, and demanded I repay him thousands of Swedish kr in compensation. More and more bizarre demands were dumped into the court and as we rallied to deal with each battle, and even prove he was fabricating evidence with doctored documents in his favor, my legal bills grew and grew.

My best friend was happy for me to come to her, but the next hurdle was how to get out of the country with my three cats before we would be put onto the street in the middle of a global lockdown. I wasted an entire afternoon trying to book a flight to the UK. Never before had I seen such a thing, no flights at all from anywhere in Scandinavia flew to the UK. Neither did any boats transit to the UK.

The irony of my being trapped once more and unable to escape hounded me but I didn’t give up. Every day I monitored the news about COVID, and in the meantime searched for a place to rent until I could get out. It was a terrible time, there was nothing for me to rent. At least nothing I could afford. I was offered a place to stay in the women’s shelter, which might sound terrible, but in Sweden is practically luxurious. They had a new building with small studio apartments, and a floor where pets could be taken, but with a caveat, only one pet could come with me. The other two would have to be taken into foster care or be rehomed by me.

With nothing moving on the lockdown front, it seemed my chance to go to the UK with my three cats was turning into a pipe dream, so I did the unthinkable - I had to decide who I would keep and who I would give up. It was horrible. I cried very hard as I wrote to the veterinarian who knew of my plight and offered to try to help me find a foster home for my other two cats, Ninya and Neh’h. I knew it had to be Nova who I would take with me into the shelter because she was the closest to me, plus the other two were more active and wild and would not cope with the stress of being confined to a studio for an indeterminable period of time. Regardless, they were still my little ones who had been in my life since 2012 and 2013 and I was sick that a man who had the wealth and means to allow us to stay in the house until I could reasonably leave without lockdown restrictions could prevent this outcome. But no. Despite my desperate emails to my lawyer to intercede for them, there was no leeway coming from my ex’s side.

And then, a chink of light. The UK lifted the lockdown for flights. I contacted SAS to book the cats to fly in the cargo and was told, no, there could be no animal transport during COVID. I tried British Airways somehow believing maybe it was going to be OK with them. I was wrong. It was a full blown ban all over the world. I wanted to scream at hitting yet another brick wall.

Instead, I searched Google for other ways to get my cats out of Sweden. After hitting a dozen dead ends, I found an animal transport van from the UK - the only animal transport company that was functioning to the UK in COVID. I called them, fuelled with hope.

They said they would not be coming through Sweden until late July. Almost a month after the deadline for me to be on the street.

I did what any desperate cat mom would do. I booked them on the transport anyway, deciding I would figure out the rest later. Then I booked my flight out and called my friend to let her know we were on our way so long as the flights weren’t banned from landing in the UK again.

Then I called my lawyer and told him I might have a problem because I wasn’t going to be able to get out of the house on the arbitrary deadline laid on me and could I please stay those three weeks because I was definitely on my way out. He said to expect the worst, so I did.

The answer came back. I would be charged rent, 15,000kr for the three weeks that would be taken from me out of the court decision. It was a ridiculous sum and absolutely a case of profiteering but what could I do? I didn’t have the money but I stayed anyway and packed, terrified at any moment the electricity would be cut or the Internet would be disconnected, or the lock would be changed while I hurried out to buy food and my cats would be locked in the house and I would have no way to get to them. It was a tense three weeks, made worse by the fact that the animal transport was held back trying to get into Sweden from Finland because of COVID.

The days dwindled and my flight loomed. Still no animal transport. I had to get on my flight. I found a cattery and asked if they could help me. They were fantastic and looked after the cats for the four days after I left the country and handled their transition to the transport van.

And then, just like that, we were in England and together again, safe at last. It was an incredible feeling not to live in total fear, not to have the gnawing awareness that someone has total control over your life. And even though it was the hardest way out, I knew I had made the right decision to fight to the bitter end to keep my cats with me.

We stayed with my best friend until Sept 30, 2022 as I waited out the court case fight and decision on the divorce settlement, and made plans for my next steps. I lost little Neh’h in the spring of 2022, so that left Ninya and Nova to travel once more to their new home with me in Poland at the end of September.

Ninya’s story is covered in a previous post in this blog, which you can read here. But with Nova, things were much less complex. She’s a tiny little girl, and easily fit into the dimension and weight restrictions set by LOT Airlines for her to travel with me in the cabin. She was a great traveller and many other travellers commented on how calm she was in the airport as she looked around and watched the world go by, as if she knew everything was going to be alright.

On the flight, she had her own seat and the airline staff made a fuss of her. And once we arrived to the house, she left the carrier and explored with curious little meows discovering all the nice things waiting for her, and has been living in spoiled contentment ever since.

And so, here we are, settled at last in our lovely new home with a man who loves us all like crazy and after years of uncertainty, abuse, and trauma it is something like a miracle to me. At last everything I fought so hard for back in 2020 has come to fruition. I was told I would never be loved by anyone, and that I would end up in a ditch.

Unfortunately for my aggressor, neither of these predictions came true.