I am Amalia Maldonado Laiseca, a writer from São Paulo, Brazil. My roots come from Spain: when I’m dancing I am Sevillana, as my father is from Seville; but, when it comes to putting up a fight, I am Basque much like my mother.
For now, London has become my new found home – until, of course, I feel it is time for another new adventure.
Living in London has changed how I view the world. It has changed my understanding and perception of the human relationship to their surrounding environment.
Honestly, London to me is just a beautiful mystery.
The beginning of my career: Book Number One
Growing up poor, I had worked from a very young age and by the time I turned 18, I got my first managerial-type role. I was working in a traditional and prominent shipping company in Brazil where I was in charge of five experienced.
Needless to say, as an 18-year-old, I had to quickly get my head around the idea of being a leader, and I had to learn how to do this really fast.
This experience actually resulted in the creation of a guide called “Curso de Lideranca para Jovens” (The Course to Leadership for the Young) in 1981. My hope with this guide was to help young people, who are starting their careers in a leadership role, learn and develop the skills needed to succeed in “Empresa União de Transportes”. A niche that at the time, was pretty limited.
After more than forty years, this first book of mine still contains knowledge that is useful to today’s younger leaders, which is why I had it professionally printed in 2018.
Today, it has grown into one of my recurring seminars.
By the end of the 1990s, whilst beginning a successful career as a saleswoman in various sectors, on the side, I also began working as a freelance writer for magazines about these company guides.
I also collaborated with work colleagues in the news sector by writing field-trainings and didactic content to improve door-to-door and telemarketing sales with the focus on scaling customer service aptitude overall.
By 2015, this side hussle of mine progressed and opened doors for my writing career. I began working as a blog content writer, screenplayer and ghostwriter for several different companies:
- www.outoo.com.br
- www.animame.com.br
- www.centromediadores.com.br
- www.baudocredito.com.br
- www.bsgi.org.br
A timeline of my writings
In 2018, once I found the self-love I needed to push my writing career further, was when I professionally printed The Course to Leadership for the Young, in 2018. That same year, I published my first novel “A flor que o meu amor colheu” (The flower that my love harvested) about the saga of a much rich Czechoslovakian family that discovered had lost everything on board a ship coming to Argentine when the second war starts.
I honestly believe that sharing our own unique knowledge and experiences with other is the way to improve the lives of those around us. Which is why, after publishing my first book, I decided to create a free lecture centered around the question: How to write your first book? I began presenting this lecture at public high schools in Brazil.
In 2019, I wrote “O violão, paixões, aventuras, traições, mistérios e melodias” (The Guitar, the adventures, the betrayals, the mysteries and the melodies) read more here.
By April of 2020, the translated version of this book also came out in Spanish, “La Guitarra, pasiones, aventuras, traiciones, misterios y melodías” (waiting for final proofread).
This same year, I started my first children’s series, “Letters to You” in three languages (English, Spanish and, Portuguese). The first written book to this series has is, “Dody Dolphin´s letter to you (about sea contamination) and Santa Claus´ letter to you (about changes that happened in our life because of the pandemic).
In 2021 are coming letters by Shirley Squirrel (about bin discharge on the streets), Agnes Eagle (air contamination), Olga Owl (deforestation), and Walter Worm (electromagnetic contamination).
Putting my personal fight on paper
Though I was gaining momentum and experience professionally speaking, my health and self-esteem was an area in my life I could not seem to manage.
I battled with the scale and my body image throughout my whole life. Without getting into the nitty-gritty, in 2017 I had finally broken the vicious cycle and ridden myself of the chains that held my back throughout my life.
It took many long years of trial and error, fallbacks and frustrations, restarts and repeats, until I developed a healthy mind-body-soul balance and consequently, established a high self-esteem.
Because of this journey I went through, I now have people from all walks of life who come to me for support and guidance as they battle with themselves through the same wars.
Based on my personal experience, I knew that this would be an ongoing, daily battle for everyone in that conference, which is why at present, I am co-writing a book about the human-food/meal relationship. I want people to have help whenever is most needed in one’s personal, daily life. I want to be a helping hand.
Writing to heal
By writing and telling our personal stories, we learn to view traumatic experiences through a different perspective, which then allows us to rewrite our own pasts. It is, needless to say, a healing and liberating process.
Every life is important because every life is uniquely different. Paths may cross upon each other but the trails left behind will always look different in hindsight. And these paths carry the story that another being may be in desperate need to hear – and it may just be what changes another person’s direction by influencing their behaviors and ultimately their destiny.
Nothing else in life makes me happier than listening to someone’s story that teaches me something new, that then feeds into my writing which I hope to share with someone new.
Thank you for stopping by to visit my website. If you have connected with my words, or my mission, I invite you follow me on this adventure of capturing letters, syllables, words and phrases in attempt to make the world a bit more vibrant and beautiful!