Soenke Scharnhorst's Business Card Soenke Scharnhorst

German version

I’m Soenke. I was born in 1979 in Stuttgart, Germany. On my eighth birthday, we moved to the Odenwald, where I attended primary and secondary school. I’ve been writing since second grade, ever since a teacher encouraged me to do so in the hope that it would improve my spelling. I completed my military service in Germersheim and Karlsruhe, and later studied at the Dual University in Mannheim. Over the years, I explored nude photography and began writing more seriously. Since 2000, I’ve worked for Europe’s largest software company. In 2007, at my first girlfriend’s request, we moved to Singapore. She left me shortly after. That same year, my first science fiction short story was published, and I became an atheist. A few months later, I met a woman who had also been left by her first partner. We married in 2011 and moved back to Germany in December 2013, together with our first son. Our second son was born during a trip to Berlin. My parents married at 20 and traveled for ten years before having my brother and me. My father passed away far too early, at the age of 71. Life is too short to wait. For my 40th birthday, we traveled around the world in 78 days. I broke my shoulder in Yellowstone, lost my backpack, including my wallet and camera, at Ground Zero just three days before our flight home, and our return was delayed a few hours due to an engine issue on the plane. My shoulder held up, the police were annoyed they had to check my bag for explosives, but I got it back, and we arrived safely. Just weeks later, Thomas Cook went bankrupt and left hundreds stranded, but by then, we were already home. Between 2019 and 2025, I produced nearly 500 podcast episodes. In 2012, I contributed to a patent. In 2023, we moved into our own house and began working on our first English-language romantasy-hopepunk novel. So far, we’ve traveled to around 34 countries across four continents: Europe, Asia, North America, and Oceania. I’m still missing Portugal, Korea, Poland, and Greece for my personal “bingo.” One of my dreams is to take the whole family on a cycling tour around Taiwan. Next up, I’m working on a white paper about the urgent need for an open, sovereign European social media platform that is independent of commercial providers. A few years ago, I sold the rights to one of my short stories for eight years. Once I get them back, I plan to translate all of my short stories into English, revise them, and publish them as an anthology. Our next novel will be inspired by Universe 25, the mouse utopia experiments conducted by John B. Calhoun.

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