As I said in my earlier blog post, I was going to be including audio here, and it has now been posted. Go listen to my first audiobook.
Before you take that listen though I’m going to tell you how I created this story.
As you know, I’m a creative writing major, so I obviously create stories. I was taking an exile literature class last semester, where we talked about our ancestors and how they came to America. Everyone had great immigration stories, and I had basically nothing. All I knew was that my great-great-grandpa came over from Denmark in 1912. Someone in that class asked me about my story, and I had to say I don’t really know. All I knew came from a journal my great-great-grandpa had written before he died. At that time, I was also taking my first real creative writing class and didn’t have any idea what to write about.
That’s when it hit me, I should write a story about my great-great-grandpa’s immigration story. So that’s what I did.
The story of Sevnd you are listening to comes from real events. Anna and Walter aren’t real; they are there to cause a bit of conflict in the story. However, everything else is a real event that happened. My great-great-grandpa did see the iceberg that sank the Titanic. I did have to do some research along with this story. I found the immigration documents and had to go to a lot of relatives to get Svend’s documents.
The story you are hearing is a bit of a first draft. I submitted the work as my final for my creative writing class. I would like to continue the story one day when I get the time. There is so much to Svend’s story that I want to write about. I hope that you enjoy Svend’s story!