Author Florence Wetzel has followed her curiosity across countries and genres—from literary fiction to mysteries, from Brooklyn to Sweden and Greece. In this conversation, she reflects on her years abroad, the inspirations behind her novels Aspasia and The Grand Man, and how language, place, and personal truth continue to shape her creative path.
Q: You were born in Brooklyn, New York, but lived in Greece from 1990 to 1995, in a small fishing village in Crete. How did that happen?
The seeds for my move to Greece go back to 1976, when my family took a trip to Europe. We went on a cruise to Greece and stopped in Crete to visit Knossos. The light there captivated me—it left a deep, almost mystical impression.
In 1989, a friend was doing an archaeological dig in Crete and invited me along so I could do my writing there. I was 27, living cheaply in Hoboken and working part-time. I wasn’t particularly rooted, so I thought, “Why not? It’ll be an adventure.”
That’s how I ended up living in a small fishing village in northeastern Crete. While my friend worked, I wrote and fell in love with the village—and eventually with a local fisherman. I’d been craving something different from city life, and the village felt like another world. The early 90s were of course before the internet and personal computers, so when I look back, I realize it really was another world.
Flash forward to 2025: I’m retired and spending time in Crete again, in my old village. It feels great to be back.
Q: What was it about living in Crete, specifically in this village, that shaped you personally and creatively?
As much as I loved living in Hoboken, I was looking for something different. Most of all, I wanted to be closer to nature. In New Jersey, life rushes by so quickly. People talk fast and always have so much to do. In this village in Crete, time was different. There wasn’t that constant drive to be busy and productive.
In New Jersey, when you meet someone, one of the first questions people ask is “What do you do? What’s your job?” In Crete, it was “Where are you from? Who are your people?” Or “Tinos eisai?” as people say in Greek. People in Crete don’t usually define themselves by their work. They define themselves by where they were from and their families, who often go back centuries in the same village.
I remember once talking to a man from Heraklion who came to visit my village. He had an interesting job, but when I asked him about it, he said, “When I’m at work, I talk about my job. I’m not at work now, so I don’t want to talk about it.”
That gave me a different perspective on how you could live and define yourself. In that sense, village life changed my perception of myself. There was a rootedness I got to experience, even as an expat.
Q: What inspired you to write a story set in Greece?
My first year in Crete in 1990 was an intense adjustment period. I was overjoyed to be there, but I was adapting to a whole new lifestyle, and I was also struggling to learn Greek. It certainly wasn’t time to start a new writing project.
After about a year, something clicked. Maybe it was finally having enough experiences there to write about, but suddenly I had an idea for my book Mrs. Papadakis. I wrote it from 1991 to 1992, and self-published it in 2002. It’s a light, affectionate story about an American woman in a Cretan village deciding whether to stay or go back to the U.S.
Once that book was done, I started
Aspasia. It’s a much different story, about the darker side of village life. I wrote
Aspasia from 1992 to 1993, and I also published that book in 2002, along with
Mrs. Papadakis.
Now all these years later, I’m slowly working through my older books and republishing them. Each book is getting a new cover and a very thorough edit. I re-released Aspasia in July 2025, and I’ll be re-releasing Mrs. Papadakis in January 2026.
Looking back at these two books, they were completely inspired by living in Crete: the village, the people, the nature, and also the experience of living in a small community.
Q: What do you personally love most about Greece, then or now? What did you want to capture in your novels?
A: The pace of life and the different sense of time. And equally, the stunning nature. Crete has amazing mountains in all shapes and forms, and of course the sea is just stunning. There are always amazing sunsets and moonrises, and it’s nice to slow down and experience them.
I also really love olive trees. Around my village, we have some really old ones that are truly beautiful. When olive trees get old, they start splitting apart, making fascinating shapes with their branches. I also love the smells of Crete, like the oregano and sage that grow wild in the mountains.
The sense of safety is something else I enjoy. You can go on walks deep into the mountains and never feel scared.
Because there are fewer people and more nature in Crete, it makes you feel right-sized. It quiets you down and puts the human experience in perspective. We humans can tend to think we’re the center of the universe, but it’s hard to feel that in Crete. Nature is always bigger than you are.
Q: What do you want to pass on to people about Greece? What do you hope they feel about the country?
I think all the things I just mentioned: the beauty of the landscape, the slower pace of life, and the unique charm of the Greek people, especially in Crete.
One danger for expats is that most people first experience the country while on vacation, so they think it’s paradise. They imagine that living in Greece will always be like that. But once you move there, daily life sets in. You have the same responsibilities as anywhere else, paying rent, putting food on the table, etc. It’s important to find a balance: to keep connected to the things you originally loved about Greece, but at the same time take care of the practicalities.
Q: Aspasia explores a difficult reality about family and survival. What inspired you to approach such a challenging subject?
A: The main inspiration was the book Astradeni by Evgenia Fakinou, which ends with something violent happening to a child. For a writer, that’s a very bold choice, to end on a violent act without giving the reader a sense of justice or healing. It’s an amazing book, but I was haunted by it and felt I needed to fix it. Maybe that’s partly what writing is for me, a chance to fix things, to create the world as I would have. So Aspasia came from this inner hunger to change that ending.
Another inspiration was Antigone by Sophocles, which I read in university in a class on classical Western literature. I was struck by the theme of someone seeking justice when society won’t give it, and having to create justice on their own terms. A modern literary example is Lisbeth Salander from The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo: she is abused and can’t get help from the system, so she takes care of her abuser herself.
Also, a friend’s mother told me the kind of violence in Aspasia was not uncommon in her village. I was haunted by that too.
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Q: Aspasia connects to ancient Greece, and the name Aspasia has historical significance as an important woman in ancient Greek culture. What meaning did you want that name to carry in your story?
There are two threads to that. One is that I know a woman named Aspasia who lives in my village. I met her one summer in the early 90s when we were both cleaning pottery shards for archaeologists. She has a great sense of humor and tells wonderful stories. I’d never heard the name before I met her, and I thought it was so beautiful. The original Aspasia is still alive, by the way! And we still have chats.
The second aspect is the historical figure of Aspasia. While planning the book, I did some research and learned about her incredible history in Greece’s Golden Age. I also learned that in Greece, when you name a child after a great person, it gives them something to live up to.
People think little girls are powerless, but actually they are very strong. That’s why I wanted to name the book Aspasia. The five-year-old girl in the book goes through a terrible ordeal, but she doesn’t give up. Her mother supports her, and she finds a way forward toward healing. Like the ancient Aspasia, who was a strong heroine, I feel this little girl named Aspasia in my book is also a heroine to look up to.
Q: Throughout the book, we see Greek words and phrases sprinkled in. How did you decide which Greek words to include, and what was your approach to that?
Since the book is written in English but set in Greece, I wanted to remind readers that the characters are actually speaking Greek. Sprinkling in Greek words helps with that. But I had to be careful not to overwhelm readers, otherwise the book could start to feel like a language lesson.
I chose a few key Greek words to include—always transliterated into Roman letters, never using Greek script. Two examples are “kafeneio” and “pappou” (grandfather). Hopefully, readers get used to seeing these words in the story, and this gives them the flavor of speaking in Greek.
A friend who’s a Greek language teacher helped me with the transliteration, making sure the transliterated words were simple and clear for readers. It was important for me to get that right, especially since I hope Greeks will read the book, and I want to respect their beautiful language.
Q: Tell us a bit about your journey studying Greek.
When I was growing up in America, I studied Latin and hated it. I also studied a little Spanish, and I hated that too. Foreign languages just weren’t my thing, maybe because I didn’t see any immediate rewards.
Then in 1990, at age 27, I found myself living in Greece. Back then, most people over 55 in my village didn’t speak any English. Even those who knew English would switch to Greek when we were in a parea. I remember sitting there and not understanding a word, feeling like a baby who didn’t know anything.
A friend who lived overseas had advised me to bring an English-language Greek grammar book, so that was my only resource. Remember, there was no internet or YouTube back in the early 90s! But even with the book, I found learning Greek a real struggle. The alphabet felt like an impossible block. In that first year, I tried to learn the alphabet three times, but each time I got confused and gave up. Each time I abandoned my studies, I lost confidence.
My breakthrough came when I realized I’m a visual learner. I couldn’t read adult books, but looking at children’s books helped me. Seeing a sentence and understanding a few words gave me the confidence I needed to keep going. I started studying about an hour a day with my grammar book, and I paid attention to the words I was hearing in daily life. Learning long vocabulary lists wasn’t helpful for me; I found it was better to learn words people were actually saying.
Living in a small village helped a lot. You can see results quickly, and it feels great when you start understanding what people are saying. It’s also really important to ask questions. Some people have patience with language learners, some don’t, but try to find the ones who do and learn from them.
My big tip to your readers is: don’t stop studying. Even when it’s hard, keep going, because every time you stop, you lose confidence and motivation. Just 10 minutes a day can keep the momentum going.
Q: Which countries have you lived in? And how do you think these different cultural environments have shaped you as a person or as a writer?
I lived in Crete from 1990 to 1995, which was my first experience living overseas as an expat. From 1995 to 2013, I stayed mostly in America and didn’t travel much. Then in 2013, I became very interested in Sweden and started spending chunks of time there every year. I even learned Swedish, which took a lot of work, but it gave me a deeper connection with the culture. Just as learning Greek had given me a better appreciation of life in Crete.
Sweden gave me a very different perspective on life. They have this concept of lagom, which means “just the right amount.” It’s such a contrast to America, where it often feels like “too much is not enough.” The Swedish approach feels more balanced, with a much healthier work-life rhythm. Most Swedes are not particularly religious, but nature seems to serve as their spiritual practice, which I also found inspiring.
In 2020, when the pandemic made it impossible to visit Sweden, I started traveling to London instead, spending several months there at a time. It’s been interesting adjusting to British culture: knowing the language of course makes it easier, but there are still unique rules and customs. London is amazing, so vibrant and stimulating, much like New York in many ways. I love the British humor and the energy of the city. But it’s a rather intense place, so it only works for me in small doses.
As for Crete, I love its slower, rooted pace of life. I grew up in cities, and I’ll always need that energy, but as I get older, I’m appreciating the quiet of the Greek village more.
Q: You mentioned Sweden, and I know you’ve written a Swedish mystery, The Grand Man. Was that book inspired by your time there, and did you include autobiographical elements, similar to how your book set in Greece reflects your own experience?
The Grand Man is actually why I first went to Sweden in January 2013. I’d been reading a lot of Swedish mysteries, starting with The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, and I decided to write my own. I went there to do research, and that’s when I fell in love with Sweden.
There are three main characters in The Grand Man: two are Swedish, and one is an American journalist who comes to Sweden for the first time, just like I did. During that first visit, I took lots of notes about life in Stockholm that I used in the book. So the journalist in the book is not me exactly, but she wouldn’t exist without my own experiences there.
Q: You’ve written many mysteries like The Grand Man and Dashiki, which you call a cozy mystery, as well as horror and sinister stories. What draws you so deeply to mystery and suspense? And when it comes to Aspasia, how do you personally classify that book—would you call it a mystery, thriller, or something else?
I grew up reading Nancy Drew. She was my absolute favorite, the classic girl detective. My mom loved mysteries too, so she really inspired me. However, when I started writing my own stories, I was more interested in writing standard literature than mysteries.
Over the years, I’ve changed my focus. Slowly I found myself drawn to writing mysteries. What intrigues me about them is figuring out the plot, and deciding how to drop clues without giving too much away. It’s challenging, but so much fun.
Aspasia is not really a traditional mystery. There are two crimes in the book, but you know right away who committed them. I think of Aspasia more as literary fiction with elements of suspense, which is why I gave it the subtitle A Novel of Suspense and Secrets. The book also tackles deeper themes, which I suppose makes it more literary. So I’d say it’s a novel with thriller and suspense elements, rather than a straight mystery.
Q: Do you see yourself continuing to write stories set in Greece in the future, or are you thinking of exploring new settings and themes for what’s coming next?
Right now, I’m focused on revisiting some of my older books, as I mentioned. That’s my main project for the next couple of years. After that, I definitely plan to write something new, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it ends up being set in Crete. I’m feeling inspired by spending time in Crete again, so it’s possible a new book set in Greece will begin to take shape in the coming years.
Q: To sum it all up, looking back at your body of work, what do you hope readers take away most from your books?
First and foremost, I hope readers enjoy my stories, that they feel entertained, even if some books are a bit challenging. I also hope that people find ideas that inspire them. Many of my books explore living an authentic life, understanding who you are and acting accordingly, even when it’s difficult.
Aspasia is really about that: being true to yourself and appreciating this beautiful world we live in, with all its diverse countries and people.
A heartfelt thank‑you to Florence for taking us on such a rich journey through her stories, travels, and creative process. It’s rare to meet someone who can weave together personal history, cultural insight, and literary craft with such warmth and honesty. We’re grateful for her time and for sharing the experiences behind the worlds she creates on the page!
You can follow Florence and more of her work
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