To realise one's nature perfectly – that is what each of us is here for. People are afraid of themselves, nowadays. They have forgotten the highest of all duties, the duty that one owes to one's self. Of course they are charitable. They feed the hungry, and clothe the beggar. But their own souls starve, and are naked. Courage has gone out of our race. Perhaps we never really had it.
(Oscar Wilde – The Picture of Dorian Gray)

I know this does not fit the topic perfectly, but there's truth in it. We often are afraid of ourselves and our own talents. We are afraid to show the world who we are and that we are worth to be appreciated. But this month is devoted to self-promotion and that is what we should all try for once. Because sooner or later we have to get out and show ourselves.

There is something else that Oscar Wilde wrote in this well-known story of his: that art should not be about the artist. Create beautiful things, but leave yourself out of it.
I think that would make promotion of your own art easier, since you won't promote something about your own life or soul. On the other hand, it makes creating art more difficult, because the thing you know best is most likely your own life. At least for me as a writer it is much easier to take a part of my life, or soul, or feelings (or just places I have been) and turn and twist it into a story, as trying to come up with something yet unknown to me.
What I tend to forget, then, is that what for me is clearly a part of me, means nothing to the reader. As long as the piece is not too obviously autobiographical, how can you, on the reading end, know what part is me? The truth is, you cannot. And what's more, hadn't I told you I often use part of my own experience, you wouldn't even know that.
As a more shallow conclusion: Promoting your art is not nearly as risky as you might think.

On to my own self-promotion, after this rather long prelude (which is even missing a link to the News Article which started all this).

About Me
I'm a master student in Biology, after having reached bachelor's degree last autumn. My mother tongue is German and I came to love English only in my last years of school, when I started reading English books. Reading really can teach you much more than teachers can, believe me.
English became my preferred language for writing when I realised that much more people on the internet will understand me that way. Also, I find this language more descriptive than my own, probably because this way I still get to search a dictionary for the best word without feeling too stupid.

I registered with deviantART in March 2007, weeks after I first heard about the site. A friend of mine had started uploading photos here, so I came frequently to look at them without any intention of joining. Until I started reading a fascinating vampire story and a mature content tag on one chapter made it impossible for me to continue without registering first. So I did and later thought I might as well upload something. At this time, I was more into philosophical writing, only for a blog and nothing like art from my point of view, but here I slowly started to write stories. Most of my now almost 200 deviations are in the literature section, and a majority of those under fiction. Philosophy lost my interest and attention, sad as it might sound.

My Work
Writing is still only a hobby to me and will probably stay that way. I love it and publishing a book someday (like someone told me I should) is a wonderful dream. But writing alone won't fill my life, and the work I'm interested in (working in a lab, doing research and all that) on the other hand makes it quite difficult to do anything else besides.
Still, I am working to improve my style and my language skills, and I know I've made some progress over the last few years.
Some examples for you:

Snapshots _{(716 words)}
Snapshots is a very special short story for me. I wrote it for the Harmless Book Project to promote hope for people who self-harm and their friends and family, and they accepted it into the book. Thus, it will be the first time my name appears in print.

Botanical Garden _{(653 words)}
This is my personal favourite. I wrote it for #Writers-Workshop and *simplyprose and it came out as twisted a story as I could come up with.

The Legend of Somebody _{(1658 words)}
This is one of my rare socio-critical pieces. It deals with the problem people cause when thinking “Somebody else should help my friend, I don't have time for his problems now.” I believe you all have experienced situations like that, no matter on which side of it. Now, imagine such a Somebody existed. He would have lots of work to do...

Awakening _{(209 words)}
This was, when I wrote it, an unusual piece for me, as it is poetry and not prose. I found that for some ideas, poetry is the fitting form, as prose cannot bring the point across so well.
Here, I wanted to show with few words that break-ups are never the end of the world, like many of us believe sometimes.

Betray Your Heart With Logic _{(1186 words)}
For similar reasons I wrote this non-fictional piece of prose. I invented a concept to overcome heartsickness which worked well for me at the time, and seems to have helped others as well. No guarantees that it always works, though. By now, I have actually lost believe in The One True Love.

The Demon Within _{(around 21.400 words)}
At last, I want to show you an older piece I edited and uploaded. It is the first long story (almost, but not quite, enough for a book) I wrote and started based closely to my life at the time. Only that the setting went into the fantasy realm and lost touch to reality in further course. I am proud of it, as it started out as a short story representing a problem I had, and turned out to be an adventurous story about life in general.

Of course you are invited to take a look at the rest of my gallery and read as much more as you like.

Also, feel free to read Installing Love, a translation I made from Italian to English so that more people can read that lovely idea.