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Author Musician Coach
WRITING SCHOOL'S OUT FOREVER
How My Book and I Grew Up
The story of this book begins long before I even knew I would one day be an author. Writing has actually been a constant thread throughout my life—sometimes obvious, sometimes quite cleverly disguised in homework, teaching materials, or endless thoughts about life. It wasn't until I dropped out of school that I realized there was something there that had always been with me. But this story begins in first grade.
My very first story
Just as I started singing when I could speak, I began writing texts and stories when I learned to write. More precisely: in first grade. My first story, however, can only be understood if it's read aloud. It was about Olaf and Uta, the characters from our German class, who went together to an ice cream parlor to spend their four marks.
MAYBE I'LL BECOME AN AUTHOR ONE DAY.
I wrote and read my way through my childhood and adolescence. At one point, the idea of becoming an author even crossed my mind. I'd already come up with a pseudonym. However, I had just as many other ideas about what I could be. After graduating from high school, I was initially drawn to journalism. Two months of internship at RTL's "Punkt 12" later, that interest had waned, at least for the time being. Perhaps it was RTL that had something to do with it.
Writing, however, never completely disappeared. At university, I expressed my creative and writing skills in term papers, and later as a teacher in teaching materials and worksheets. The fact that writing had apparently been a fairly constant part of my life all along hadn't even occurred to me.
During my therapy in my early 30s, I produced vast amounts of text. I wrote down insights, sorted through my thoughts, tried to understand and record connections. The thought kept recurring:
IT CAN'T JUST BE ME WHO HAPPENS THIS!
I am human, and my feelings can't be that special. With all this pain, these problems, this shame, with all these blockages and inner prohibitions, I simply couldn't be alone!
WHY IS NO ONE TALKING ABOUT THIS?
That's precisely where the core idea for SOULKANGAROO came from: I wasn't willing to censor myself. Whenever I experienced, realized, or processed something, I wanted to talk and write about it so others could see that it's normal. My friend Abi said to me about my notes at the time: "You have to write a book about this! Other people need to know this, too."
Writing had long since become an integral part of my life again – but the idea of considering myself an author still hadn't occurred to me.
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REMEMBERING
In my final year of school, the coaching program for leaving school focused, among other things, on rediscovering skills and interests that could potentially serve as new career paths. And suddenly I realized how naturally writing had accompanied me throughout my life. At the same time, I had spent months intensively preparing, thinking through, and documenting my decision to leave school. At some point, it became clear: I'm going to write the book I myself needed. Because even during my own school exit, I kept thinking: Surely I can't be the only one feeling this awful. And if this book could ultimately help just one person, then it would have been worthwhile.
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SCHOOL EXIT
EXORCISM & BRAIN VOMIT
When my last day of school was over, after months of transitioning from school to university, pandemic, lockdown, receiving my demotion certificate, graduating high school, marking papers, saying goodbye, and then COVID, I was completely incapacitated. Weeks of coma. To put it in a nutshell: I wore the same underwear and pajamas for days on end.
On the first day of the new school year 2020/21, I deliberately set my alarm. While my former colleagues were in the first teachers' conference , I sat down and began to write. Everything had to come out. My studies. The two state exams. The teaching traineeship. The years in the school system. Grading marathons, commutes, stress, anger, boundary violations, and all the things I'd wondered about for years: Why doesn't anyone talk about these things?
For two months, I wrote practically non-stop. Initially, there was no structure to it at all. Just years full of experiences, frustrations, and feelings that needed an outlet. A veritable exorcist. And my body was writing along with me: sweaty nights, constant migraines, old stress symptoms. Twice a week I was at my doctor's for IV fluids and acupuncture, once a week for a Thai massage – often with special treatment for my right "corrective arm," worn down by over a decade at my desk. I thought pretty quickly: The book is practically finished already.
Spoiler alert: It wasn't.
Cover & title ideas
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Writing is not yet a book...
After two months, I had a mountain of text and could already picture myself on the bestseller lists. So I booked a mentoring program on writing book proposals so I could quickly find a publisher. For months, I worked through workbooks to figure out what my book should be about, who its target audience was, and how to create a meaningful chronology for the table of contents. The latter was incredibly difficult: What happened when? What thematically belonged together? And above all: How could readers understand what school really means when everything there always seems to happen at once?
I had the idea of a journey in stages (now there are six, initially there were thirteen!) – I even had a travel itinerary! I sorted, rearranged, structured, and built a story from all the parallel levels, one that even people who hadn't worked in schools for years could follow. At times, I printed out entire chapters, cut them up, and rearranged individual passages on the floor. Only when the structure was clear could I write the final chapter : the analysis of the school system. Only with this distance did I understand what kind of structures I had become entangled in for over a decade – and what lay beneath them. I regularly shuddered, and sometimes felt nauseous, whenever a new connection revealed itself.
Back then, I was working with an agent and learning how to structure a manuscript professionally—and that was desperately needed: it had almost 700 standard pages, and around 350 had to go. That's when my next lesson began: cutting . That's where it got complicated —because how was I supposed to cut out such fundamental experiences? Every line I deleted felt like I was denying a part of my own story—and that was physically painful! Overall, I was stubborn, quickly felt overlooked, and wanted to rush through changes far too quickly. In doing so, I had to learn something that completely contradicted my previous working methods as a teacher : texts are like good yeast dough. They need to rise. Sometimes you have to leave them alone for a few days to then look at them with fresh eyes. And something else was unfamiliar: being shown what wasn't working yet without being praised for every bit of progress. Suddenly, I understood perfectly those students who got their papers back marked in red and just thought: Shit. Everything's wrong.
The itinerary
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The story in Instagram posts
And now to find a publisher...
Eventually, my mountain of writing had actually become a finished manuscript. Now the agent was supposed to take care of getting the book published. But very little happened. The processes were slow, communication was sluggish, and I waited for things to finally move forward. So I did what I'd apparently become quite good at: I simply kept learning. I focused on how to create press kits and present myself as an author. And because SCHOOL'S OUT FOREVER was stuck somewhere between manuscript and publication, I simply wrote more books in the meantime.
If nothing happens, I'll just keep writing.
While my bestseller awaited its big release, I traveled extensively—and continued to use writing to process my experiences. My first travel novel , written in Costa Rica, dealt with the painful breakup with my best friend—and conveniently, my fear of spiders as well. The second part followed in Andalusia, where I spent six weeks in a small house with a couple of friends, navigating all the tensions that entailed. I also wrote another non-fiction book about the systemic rules of schools. So, my problem clearly wasn't a lack of ideas, but rather how I would ever organize and publish all these ideas, manuscripts, and projects.
The hummingbird: an important symbol in my first travel novel. And, after Costa Rica, on my forearm.
FINALLY INTO THE WORLD
The few publishers who responded found my book well-written—but too personal. Apparently, it wasn't my target audience . Nevertheless, I was determined: this book had to be published. Self-publishing was the only way. My agent supported me along the way, while I taught myself everything: cover design, formatting, and uploading.
In 2024, my book, FOREVER SCHOOL FREE, was finally published on Amazon. I also produced the audiobook. Once again, it was learning by doing. I built a small studio in my room and spent weeks re-recording passages: breathing too loudly, wrong tempo, the creaky chair. Professional mastering made everything upload-ready, and in the meantime, I opened an account in the US for distribution. Paperback, hardcover, ebook, and audiobook: the book was finally out in the world. And I thought: Now we can really get started.
THE BOOK LEARNS TO WALK
The first feedback and reviews came in, and I gave my first living room reading . But the big breakthrough never materialized. Things slowly became financially tight: my savings dwindled, and I simply wasn't earning any money. Then, in September 2025, my collaboration with my agent suddenly ended. Let's just say it wasn't an easy separation. The whole thing had quite concrete consequences for my book as well. Suddenly, I had to figure out: what am I actually allowed to do with my own book? How do I get out of existing agreements? So, a few years after leaving my teaching position, I found myself back in the same situation, dealing with contracts, dependencies, and this time even seeking legal advice. At some point, the irony of the situation dawned on me: I had written a book about liberation—and now I had to liberate the book itself.
A SECOND CHANCE
Before anything new could be created, the old had to go: all previous editions were blocked and removed from sale. After more than five years of work and one publication, the book needed a makeover. The title was finally to be in English—just as I had originally planned: SCHOOL'S OUT FOREVER . And this time, I wanted to really let my creativity flow. I added pictures to the pages, increased the font size for better readability, wrote a new epilogue, and changed the price. From now on, everything will be exclusively available through print-on-demand services , because too many people refuse to order through Amazon. This way, you can also conveniently order the book from your favorite local bookstore .
With the new issue in hand, I headed out to the next reading at the city library, where I had always borrowed the entire comic book collection as a child.
It took this book over five years to finally become free—and it took me along on the giant journey of liberation. We are both adults now. Now it can—like me—have its own impact, discover the world, and forge its own path.
