I'm sometimes asked this question: why did I start writing only after I turned 45? And what stopped me from starting earlier?

Nothing stopped me. That's the thing.

For twenty years I ran a mattress factory in St. Petersburg. That sounds boring, but it wasn't boring at all — it was big, alive, demanding work. My husband and I built it from scratch, starting in 2005. I loved every part of it: the people who worked there, and what we made. I wasn't living in wait of something better. I was just living.

And yet — not once did I seriously think about writing a book.

In November 2022, my family and I left Russia. Four suitcases, three sons, a husband — and a plane to Thailand. No concrete plan, no idea what would come next. At some point it simply became completely clear: you can't keep putting life off for later. We had no "later." There was only now.

In Thailand I woke up at six in the morning, because you can't sleep much later than that there. Ivan went for a run, the kids were still asleep. I sat on the balcony with a cup of coffee, looking out at an unfamiliar sea. And suddenly I felt — not thought up, not planned, actually felt — that I wanted to write something of my own.

The interesting thing is I didn't know about what. I wrote my first story: The Magic of One Morning. My husband and I had just come back from that very morning, and to keep from spilling its magic, I wrote the story down.

That was the beginning. Of the book that would later become Love Lives Here.

I wrote in the mornings, while my family slept. Writing goes wonderfully in the quiet.

Why now, and not earlier? I thought about this a lot. Here's what I came to understand.

Before, I didn't have the right distance. I was inside my life — tightly, with no gap. The factory, the kids, the house, the factory again. That's not a bad thing. It just didn't leave room for the question: what do I want to tell the world?

At 45, that distance appeared. We left — and I suddenly saw my life a little from the outside. I saw how much there was in it: love, fear, choices I'd made without even realizing I was making a choice. All of it had accumulated into something I could write about.

I also think that at 45 I became less afraid of getting it wrong. At 25 I wouldn't have dared: what if I write badly? What if no one reads it? What if I'm judged? Those questions are still there now, but they're not as loud anymore. I'd lived through enough to know: the scariest thing isn't failing — it's not trying.

And one last thing. Maybe the main thing.

At 45, I had something real to say. Not an abstract story, but something lived. In the first book — about a love that isn't afraid to be real. In the second — about the courage to start over when it feels too late. These aren't invented themes. They're things I lived through.

So if you're reading this now and thinking "it's too late for me" — no. It's not too late. You just haven't accumulated enough yet. Or you have, and you just haven't sat down on a balcony with coffee at six in the morning in front of an unfamiliar sea yet.

Sit down, open Word, write the first sentence.

Then delete it and write a better one. That's normal — I did that too.