I was lucky to get an interview with author Kay Xander Mellish, whose most recent book is an updated edition of “How to Work in Denmark: Tips for finding a job, succeeding at work, and understanding your Danish boss.”

Please, tell us a bit about yourself…
I grew up in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin, in the American Midwest. At age 18 I moved to New York City – Greenwich Village in Manhattan – to attend New York University. After graduation I lived in Berlin for a couple of years and Hong Kong for a couple of years before returning to New York. Then, after a decade living in Manhattan again, I visited Copenhagen on vacation, liked it, moved there, and have lived in Copenhagen ever since. I currently live in the Northwest section of the city with one teenage daughter and two cats.

Why should I buy your new book?
Denmark is a great place to live – it regularly appears near the top of the lists of the world’s happiest countries – but it isn’t an easy place for internationals to settle. There’s a certain Danish way of doing things, and the locals believe that it is the best way possible and that you will want to adopt it yourself as soon as they have explained it to you. Whether or not you do that is your own choice, but it is what they are expecting.  What I try to do in my books is explain those unwritten rules of life in Denmark and the thinking behind them.

For example, taxes in Denmark are very high, so Danes don’t put a lot of emphasis on getting a fat salary or a big bonus – the government is going to take away most of that money anyway. They rarely use their job titles, usually just introducing themselves by their first names, so climbing the corporate ladder isn’t a big priority either.

Instead, they value their free time, so they limit their working hours and take every moment of their annual five weeks’ vacation. This is a wonderful way to live when you’re a worker, but it can be annoying when you are a customer. The pharmacy you need might close at 1pm on Saturday and stay closed all day on Sunday, and the restaurant where you are dining probably closes its kitchen at 9pm and wants you out the door by 10pm.

What got you into writing? And how long have you been doing it?
I didn’t choose to get into writing – it was something I’ve always done, ever since I could read and write. Every day of my life I have written something or other. I’ve often thought I could survive prison if I had an adequate supply of pens and paper.

Apart from the usual student creative writing I worked as a financial journalist, then as a scriptwriter for TV news, then as a written content producer for a big online news and entertainment outlet, and then in Corporate Communications. And I’ve always had my own writing projects on the side, some of them more successful than others.

Why did you choose to mainly write guides for foreigners living in Denmark?
When I first came to Denmark, I wrote a couple of blog entries about my struggles as a newcomer and then basically forgot about them. But I kept getting emails from people who were also struggling and found the blog posts to be helpful. At one point, I was given a nice severance package to leave a corporate job and suddenly had a lot of time on my hands and no urgency to find a new position, so I revisited some of the old blog posts with a view towards making a podcast. (The “How to Live in Denmark” podcast is still running 10 years later.) I started publishing the transcripts of the podcast, which turned into a book, which turned into a speaking career, which turned into more books, and so on.

Before this I was a completely unsuccessful fiction writer, but what I learned from my journalism career is that you have to provide people with something they want to read. People didn’t want to read my fiction, but they did want to read my mildly humorous guides to life in Denmark, so that’s what I write.

Which other author has had the biggest influence on your writing?
James Thurber, probably, because he had a gentle, US Midwestern US sense of humor that was mostly directed at himself and his own family. It’s not an aggressive humor. (Then again, I also like early Evelyn Waugh – “Vile Bodies,” “Decline and Fall” - and that is a very aggressive humor indeed.) Anyway, I can recommend “My Life and Hard Times” for anyone who wants to sample Thurber. I also like Samuel Butler, who is less gentle than Thurber but more gentle than Waugh, “The Way of All Flesh” is one of my favorite books, particularly the scene in the art museum. 

I also owe a debt to several female writers who wrote about their own experiences with honesty and gentle humor – Mary Cantwell and her “Manhattan Memoir” trilogy, Jancee Dunn and her “But Enough About Me” series, Norah Vincent and her classic “My Life as a Man”, even Nelly Bly, one of the first great female journalists, who wrote about her 80-day trip around the world in 1888. All of these women write in a direct and confident manner – they don’t hide their mistakes, but they’re not insecure or self-deprecating.

What’s the best thing about being a writer?
I appreciate the independence and control, and the fact that you’re able to get started with very little money. During my time at New York University, which has a film school, many of my friends were aspiring directors. A lot of their time went towards trying to get their films financed. Writing doesn’t require much money, only time and concentration.

What’s the hardest thing about being a writer?
Well, the wonderful thing about being an independent writer is that you do not depend on a publisher to promote you. The worst thing about being an independent writer is that you have to do almost everything yourself, or at least find specialists to help you with it. Social media, graphics, events, recording and sound engineering audiobooks. I enjoy these things – except maybe the sound engineering - but they take time away from writing.

Do you have any tips or an author app, tool, or resource that you can really recommend we try?
I’ve always used Vellum for making eBooks, and I like the way that they are constantly updating their app with new features. It's a visually pleasing app - probably because it was created by a couple of Pixar animators, Brad & Brad.

For most aspects of physical bookmaking – editing, proofreading, cover design, audiobook formatting – I use trusted specialists I’ve met over the years on Upwork. I have a pretty standard team by now.

Canva is great for making quick graphics for social media – to announce a personal appearance, for example – and I’m a big fan of prescheduling my social media for up to a year in advance. (If I ever shuffle off to the big bookstore in the sky and you continue to see posts from me on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn, that’s why.) I used to pre-schedule with Hootsuite, but I now do it individually on each platform.

And now it's time to yank out your Palantir! Let’s talk about the future. What new projects are you working on?
During 2023 I’d like to update my original book “How to Live in Denmark”. It was first published in 2015, then updated in 2017, and now it is getting a little creaky in places.

I'd also like to start on a new project that combines audio walking guides with written essays. A few years ago I did an audio walking guide to Danish design in Copenhagen – you can find it on TripAdvisor – and I’d like to do more of that. The idea is that you can read in about a topic in advance and then put on your air buds and go out and experience what was being written about.

Thank you for doing the interview Kay. I’ve read several of your great (and fun!) books, and I hope lots of readers discover them and/or your podcasts, events and what have we.