17 April: Karen Blixen/Isak Dinesen

Karen Blixen, the author of Out of Africa and Babette's Feast, was born on this date in 1885. Here are some things you might not know about her.

1. Her real name was Baroness Karen Christenze von Blixen-Finecke. Her maiden name was Dinesen, which she used as part of her pen name, Isak Dinesen. Her friends, however, called her Tanne. Some of her first stories were published under the name Osceola, the name of her father's Dog.
2. Her father committed suicide when she was nine, because he was devastated by the fact he'd broken his promise to be faithful to his wife and had got a maid pregnant.
3. Her husband, Baron Bror Blixen-Finecke, was a cousin on her father's side. Growing up, she spent many holidays with his family in Sweden. Initially, she fell for his twin brother, Hans, but Hans wasn't interested. Possibly deciding his twin was the next best thing, she got engaged to Bror in 1912. They were married in Mombasa, Kenya, in 1914.
4. It was their uncle who suggested that the couple move to Africa and establish a Coffee farm. He invested in the venture and named it the Karen Coffee Company. He didn't name it after Karen Blixen, however, but after his own daughter who was also called Karen. Bror ran the farm at first, but farming wasn't his thing. He much preferred going on safari, so his wife ended up running things most of the time.
5. She and Bror separated in 1921 and divorced in 1925. He'd been unfaithful and given her syphilis when they'd been married less than a year, for which she had to return to Denmark for treatment. She stayed on the farm and in due course fell in love with someone else – a big game hunter from England called Denys Finch Hatton. He died in a plane crash during a safari in 1931. Soon after that, the coffee farm failed due to the depression and Karen left Africa for good, and went home to Denmark.
6. During the second world war, she helped to smuggle Jews out of German occupied Denmark.
7. The farm was sold to a developer and is now a suburb of Nairobi, which was named Karen after her.
8. She started writing her first book, Seven Gothic Tales, while still in Kenya. It was published in the USA in 1934.
9. She died at the age of 77 after years of health problems. She blamed the syphilis although doctors could find no trace of the disease in her system after 1925. The cure at that time was Mercury and arsenic, however, so some of her symptoms were probably caused by over use of the latter. She was also very concerned about her weight and virtually stopped eating.
10. She was shortlisted several times for the Nobel Prize for Literature, but never won. When Ernest Hemingway won it in 1952, he said he would have preferred her to win it instead of him. Two of her books, however, when made into films won Oscars – Out of Africa and Babette's Feast.

My Books 

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The Ultraheroes series

Several new groups of superheroes, mostly British, living and working (mostly) in British cities like London and Birmingham. People discovering they have, and learning to live with, superpowers. Each book is complete in itself although there is some overlap of characters.

The Raiders series

A tale of two dimensions, and worm hole travel between the two. People displaced in both time and space, learning to get along and work together to find a way home while getting used to the superpowers wormhole travel gave them. A trilogy.

Golden Thread

A superhero tale with a difference. Five heroes from another dimension keep returning - whenever they return, they have a job to do and are a well-meshed team in order to do it. Until one time, something goes wrong...

Tabitha Drake series

A different kind of power - the ability to talk to dead people. Tabitha has it, and murder victims seek her out to make sure justice is done. Tabitha has this and a disastrous love life to cope with.

Short story collections

Some feature characters from the above novels, others don't. They're not all about superheroes. Some are creepy, romantic, funny.