Henrik Wilenius

Hello,

I’m a Finnish writer and in the spring of 2023, I published in Amazon a young adult book series called the Rise Up Trilogy, with 4.6 average out of 98 reviews so far. Since then, I have also converted the trilogy into professionally narrated audiobooks and serialized weekly audiobook podcast available in all the major platforms. As a podcast guest, I would be able to provide sets of Spotify audiobook redemption codes for an audiobook giveaway.

The Rise Up Trilogy is a coming-of-age story about Hashim, Alex and Maryam, three best friends on the threshold of adulthood, dealing with real-life issues like climate change, animal rights, and gender and racial equity.

Catch You If You Fal, book one of the Rise Up Trilogy, is a thrilling, coming-of-age story with a queer protagonist about the power of friendship, overcoming harmful stereotypes, growing up in the shadow of family expectations, and discovering your true self.

In the second installment of the Rise Up Trilogy called Merry Farm, best friends Hashi, Alex, and Maryam stumble upon a huge government coverup. When more people get sicker and sicker, and nothing about the outbreak makes news, it becomes clear the corruption goes up high.

In Collusion, book three of the Rise Up Trilogy, now a well-known activist Maryam, along with her two best friends Hashim and Alex, is chosen by the President of the United States to draw up a proposal to help fight climate change, mere weeks before superstorm Roxanne makes landfall in the Northeast.

Here is my author bio:

As a child, Henrik devoured stories of faraway lands. Through them, he discovered that the pathway to understanding people from different cultures was to look for things they had in common rather than what set them apart. Finding connection to people became his passion. In his early teens, he left his safe little bubble in Helsinki and ventured out to the great big world, eventually landing in Paris.

At the age of twenty-one, Henrik returned to Finland and enrolled in the Helsinki Business School. Two years later he founded a contemporary art sale and services company, but despite the initial success he had to close down the business after five years when the whole western world fell into a deep recession.

Henrik decided to go back to school to study philosophy. One morning as he was working on an essay on rhetoric, it dawned on him that he was actually writing his first book. It was a philosophical study into his own coming-of-age. End of Restlessness was published by a Finnish publisher (WSOY) and after publishing another book, this time a young adult novel, he switched to English.

The Rise Up Trilogy was inspired by his fifteen-year stint as a volunteer in Helsinki Red Cross Youth Shelter. In a world that is turning into an increasingly hostile place for any minority, what people need is stories that evoke diversity, friendship, human decency, and the courage to listen to one’s heart.

Besides his husband, Henrik loves novels in Russian about the Soviet life, French pop, snowboarding, sampling vegan delights across the world, and spending time with their brazen, eclectic group of friends and family.