I HAVE ALWAYS read. As a boy it was Enid Blyton’s Famous Five, Tvillingdeckarna by Sivar Ahlrud and Bomba, The Jungle Boy by Roy Rockwood.

Since then I’ve always been surrounded by books and I still read every day. But I’ve never felt the urge to write, and even hated doing essays at school. In 2009, however, I had a serious accident that put me into intensive care for four months. According to what I was told afterwards, I shouldn’t have survived; all the blood poisoning and organ failure I suffered should have cost me my life.

But despite the statistics, I did survive. An ICU nurse gave me a guardian angel as a present, and said that I must have had lots of them (and I’m inclined to agree). After my long stay in hospital, I was discharged and started on my slow road to recovery. My legs had wasted away due to all the drugs I’d been given, so nowadays I’m in a wheelchair. I gradually started reading again, slowly at first, and then more and more. But this time it was different. New. There was something in my mind. I even dreamed about it.

Suddenly I had a story in my head trying to grab my attention and tell me it wanted to get written. I have no idea where it came from, but I knew that the old stone bridge in Hova, which you pass when driving down the E20 from Örebro towards Gothenburg, would be pivotal to the story.

So there we have it. Something happened to me when I was lying sedated for all those months in intensive care – a story appeared in my brain. I don’t know what the kind nurse who gave me the angel would have said, but maybe the reason I’m still alive is so that the story of the Stone Bridge and Agnes and all the others can be written, what do I know?

J F Wren