I am so happy to have an excerpt from 'One Day This Will All Make Sense' by Katie Jansson Shahin for you today. It sounds great and has such a pretty cover :)
Synopsis In the three years since Emma, Human Resource professional by trade and writer at heart, moved to Los Angeles from Sweden it has been anything but smooth sailing. When she was offered a new job Emma thought she had finally found the security she’d been looking for since moving to the city of her dreams.
The bliss is short-lived as Emma struggles to adjust in her new role and environment. She fails to learn how to play by the unwritten rules and office politics of corporate America, leaving her defenseless against a new boss who soon makes it clear that he wants her gone. After having put her writing before her HR career for so long, Emma knows it was just a fluke when she was hired and is determined not to let it slip away. But she cracks under the pressure and is ultimately fired. Will she be able to dig herself out again? Or has she peaked at 27? More importantly, will she survive in the city that represents everything she has dreamt of becoming?
Excerpt from novel written by Katie Jansson Shahin
Not one day
had passed since I had moved to LA two and half years earlier when I wasn’t
grateful and aware of what city I was in. Not one morning had passed that I had
driven to work, which was usually around six forty-five a.m., when my mind
hadn’t gone completely quiet and at ease at the sight of Vine Street, coming
off of the 101 South. I knew I was fortunate. Many young people in Sweden
dreamed of moving to LA and tried so hard to find ways to stay once they made
it here on a student visa. For the most part, people either got married or
never found a way to stay. I, on the other hand, had gotten a green card
through my dad since he’d become a naturalized citizen before I turned
twenty-one. I continued down Vine Street and saw the W Hotel sign up in the sky,
and a few blocks farther down I passed the bright red building that housed The
Redbury hotel, with the world famous Capitol Records Building on my right side.
As I got on to
the 101 North, driving ten miles an hour in Friday traffic, I wondered to myself
what it was about LA that had me so wrapped around its finger. The first time I
fell in love with California was when I watched The O.C. Shortly thereafter my dad moved here from Wisconsin, and I
was able to go visit the place I had only seen on TV. Of course, the entire
show was filmed in LA, but I didn’t know that back then. I then discovered the
show Entourage, and that’s when real
things started to happen inside me. I couldn’t quite pinpoint what it was. Was
it the beautiful weather and the smell of freshly-cut grass all year round? Was
it the wide streets you could barely cross in time before the streetlight
turned red for the pedestrians again? Was it the buildings that on the outside
looked like nothing more than a chunk of cement, but on the inside were
beautifully decorated lounges? Was it the powerful rush I had gotten the first
time I went ninety on the empty freeway at three a.m.? Or was it simply the
fact that I knew I was in the same city where all the Hollywood movies came
from?
While I saw all
the beauty that L.A had to offer, I wasn’t oblivious to all the things that
other people usually saw as the downside of moving to LA: the constant sound of
traffic and honking; the fuel-filled air and the fog; the enormous city where
everything was separated by insane distances; the huge freeways; the
above-ground electrical lines; the cracks in the pavement left by earthquakes.
I saw all those things too. But my love for this city was an unconditional kind
of love—I didn’t love LA despite its
flaws. I loved it even more for them. We could be flawed together.
About The AuthorKatie’s love for writing is versatile. Before taking the big leap into novel writing she focused mostly on screen writing. In addition to that, she has a blog where she writes book reviews and articles on writing: An Authorista’s Blog.
Katie is originally from Sweden but moved to California four years ago and currently resides in the North Bay area just outside of San Francisco. When she’s not working on her writing, she is an HR and recruiting professional. Although her debut novel is not a biography, as you may have guessed One Day This Will All Make Sense is heavily inspired by her own experience moving from Sweden to Los Angeles and her life there.
Blog: http://anauthoristasblog.blogspot.com
Twitter: @KJanSha
Thank you so much for posting this Rachel!
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