Writer | Autobiography

I was born in the small town of Rønne, Denmark. Parts of my childhood were spent in Savannah and New York City, USA. After my parents separated when I was seven, I went back to Denmark with my mother and attended primary school.

Born with a vivid imagination, I often got in trouble for "making things up" when I was a child, and my mother encouraged me to put my imagination to use by painting or writing the stories I invented. I followed my mother's advice, and spent the after school hours on the local cemetery writing stories about the lives of those who were laid to rest there.

I sold my first professional short story when I was twelve, and the ghostly tale appeared in an English anthology.

I began my tertiary education in Denmark. My mother became ill in 1987, was diagnosed with terminal cancer and passed away in 1988 at the age of fourty one. Grief-struck, I moved to Milan where I continued my studies and worked as a fashion model for four years. As much as I appreciated the glitz and glam of the fashion industry, photo shoots in exotic places and walking the runways, most evenings and weekends were spent writing stories, and I sold a number of novellas to American and English magazines during the years that followed.

While brewing on several ideas for a novel, I enjoyed six more years as a model in New York, Milan and Paris before moving back to Denmark, where I came to choose between pursuing a dream or charting a safer course. I took a job as a public relations manager for Magasin. Unhappy with my work, the dream to become a writer grew stronger. I got married in 1998, and my husband offered the support and encouragement that finally made me pursue my dream and write full time.

At the beginning of 2000, I had my first novel, Hjemsøgt, accepted for publication by Egmont. The book sold over 35.000 copies in Denmark, and I wrote Nattetimen the year after — for this endeavor, I received a literary award, touched down on the bestseller lists again, sold the film rights and was hired by the producer to write the screenplay. In the years following the publication of Nattetimen, I wrote two books as a ghost writer, a screenplay and several novellas. I also got widely known on the digital art scene for my brush collection, The 5. Muse, created for Adobe Photoshop.

My son, Lukas von Holdt was born in the winter of 2004, and I took two years on "hiatus" from writing to enjoy my newborn.

In 2009, I wrote and published my third novel, Sov Som De Døde, a gothic thriller, which got sold ahead of publication for international translation to Random House.

Now, in my early fourties, I divide my time between two locations, both of which I've come to consider home; Denmark and the Bahamas, where I continue to "make things up".

"I am a writer by heart and soul. First and above (almost) all else, I love words, the sweep and sound of a sentence"

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