My name is Irina. I am a medical doctor and I love books. I love reading books but more importantly I love to write them.
In March 2001 I came to Australia from Russia basically with no English at all, only a few basic words. By the middle of 2008 I had my first book written in English which quickly became an international Internet best-seller.
In less than 12 months the sales from the book replaced my yearly salary as a doctor at the Canberra Hospital. I quit my job at the hospital and wrote a few more books on the same topic. These were also very successful and became Internet bestsellers.
People often ask me how I did it and what made me write. I didn't write books in Russia- as I said I was a doctor – the job consumed all my time. It was a process and a whole series of events that brought me to writing and publishing.
My grandfather had a major influence on me and my creativity. He taught me a lot about literature, writers and poets. He read to me from a very young age, showing me books with photos of famous writers on them; not just the Russian classics but European and American also.
He made me learn all their names and the names of their major works; this gave me the desire to read them all when I got older.
In high school I really wanted to become a journalist but my parents insisted on me becoming a doctor. Consequently, at the age of 16 I had to change my values from creative thinking to being an intellectual thinker: a big task to conquer.
I became a "blocked artist", having my values incongruent to my soul. My soul wanted to create but I had to maintain a responsible intellectual job for 13 years of my life.
I continuously felt that something was missing in my life like most "blocked artists" do. I tried to express myself in different ways: I married and had my child very early in my life, got divorced early, married again, immigrated to a different country and learned a different language.
Luckily, I kept a diary for years and wrote everything that was occupying my thoughts - my dreams, the things I couldn't express and couldn't speak about because they were too personal.
It was when I was reading over it one day I got an idea that I would love to write a book. I spoke about this in my diary as one of the things I miss so much in my life. But what should I write about?
The turning point for me was one night at the hospital; a patient came in and asked for help with her eating disorder. I tried to help her by talking and reassuring her that there was hope. I knew a lot about this problem as I was a sufferer once myself, even helping others in Russia to get better.
When the patient left I was berated by the doctor in charge for wasting time on people like that when there were "real" patients to see.
This was the wrong approach and I knew it. That was the episode that gave me the idea for my first book. I approached my husband, William, with my idea and he was all for it. He was more than happy to help, especially as he had knowledge of psychology as it was part of his University degree.
The book was based on a true story of a person I knew who was dealing with a very sick daughter suffering from anorexia and bulimia. I was well aware of the struggle to save her daughters life and how she eventually succeeded.
The book became so successful on the internet that we were asked to publish a printed version, so we did. We self published the book.
Then I wrote and published more books all in regards to women health.
As one of the marketing strategies, every year we attend International Book Fairs (London, Frankfurt and etc.) While attending them many publishers bid on my books because they wanted to publish them but I am reluctant to ever sell all the rights to my books. Simply because when you go with a publishing company you don't get much control over your book and lose out on money also.