http://www.randomhouse.com.au/books/serdar-ozkan/the-missing-rose-9781846043413.aspx

THE MISSING ROSE by Serdar Ozkan Format: Trade Paperback ISBN: 9781846043413 Imprint: Rider Released in July, 2012

Author Q&A with Sedar Ozkan

1. If you have to describe The Missing Rose with one sentence, what would it be? Our desire for praise and approval of others steal us away from us – our dreams, our values, our inner scent – and life is a journey to reclaim our original scent and to know ourselves.

2. The book has very light, even aerial language and structure – was it also easy to write (as it seems)? The harder an author works while writing his/her book, the easier time the reader has while reading it. Having a plain simple language is often the most difficult part of the process; at least it was in my case. And I did have hard work to bring out the story so natural and accessible for the reader. I personally believe that beauty lies in simplicity, and thus I make every effort to attain that in my writing.

3. The story is told by women – there is just one man in the book. Why did you decide to write it like that? Why is the main character Diana and not Mathias? Before beginning to write a book, I don’t think and intellectualise what story I should write or which characters I should use. I try to bring out the story which has already started developing within me; I try to see the story. And in the case of The Missing Rose, I saw that the main character was a female. And the second story which I found within me was about a little boy, and that is my second book.

4. If we could see Diana and Mathias five years later – what would we see? I truly don’t know. We have to ask them. But I believe they will have both progressed in their own journey of knowing themselves. Whether they do this together or not, whether they are together or not.

5. The Missing Rose was your first book and very successful. Did the success surprise you? Not the success, but the story surprised me. It was beyond me, and readers, regardless of culture and nationality, they loved the story as much as me. And success was a natural outcome of readers’ love for the story. If the author is not

touched by the story he is writing, the reader will never be. And when The Missing Rose was completed, looking at how my heart felt about it, I knew that readers would enjoy it. And the hearts of the readers all over the world have not mistaken me.

6. What next? Are you working on something new right now? My second novel, When Life Lights Up, is already written and so far been published in over 20 countries. It is again related to self-discovery but on a different level. It is a novel about hope, unconditional love and the miracle of life. The story is about a unique little boy; the special friendship he enters into with a dolphin and his experience with the Angel of Death twenty years later. And currently, I am working on my third book which should remain as a surprise at least until all the foreign editions of my second book is published.

7. What are your favourite books and authors? What are you reading now?

I love reading works of authors such as St Exupery, Herman Hesse, Albert Camus, William Blake and Rumi . . . And then there are books I like, like Follow Your Heart by Susanna Tamaro, Metamorphosis by Kafka . . . And recently I read Replay by Ken Grimwood which I enjoyed greatly.

8. Describe please your ordinary day. What do you like to do in your free

time? Do you have a free time at all? I generally wake up very early and start working before or at sunrise, as I find that I write best in those hours when the mind is fresh and closest to the dream state. Every two hours, I take a short break and walk along the sea to refresh my mind. This routine is mostly true when I am writing the first draft of a book. Then there is the rewriting, editing part of the process which I can work in the later hours of the day. I love the sea so much, and so I try write by the sea whether at home or at a cafe by the sea. And there is of course scheduled reader events, book launches in foreign countries, interviews, etc. And since The Missing Rose is published in over 50 countries, this can take a quite bit of time. But I still do have free time in the end, and I use some of it just for people watching sitting at an outdoor cafe, especially I love to do this in foreign countries, to observe how differently life and people manifests in different cultures.

Author Q&A with Serdar Ozkan, author of The Missing Rose Available in bookshops and ebook retailers July 2012

The Missing Rose: Print ISBN: 9781846043413 | ebook ISBN: 9781448117888 Imprint: Rider | Publisher: Random House Australia

Copyright © Sedar Ozkan 2012. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.