Roseanne's Summer Vacation- Afterword
Afterword
or, Roseanne Juzynski Does (Not) Exist 2.0
Here we are, a little over a year after the completion of my first novel. Rest assured, I am not going to turn this section into a glorified essay on the craft of writing that would put Stephen King to shame. But allow me to go over a couple of things.
It was not my intention to continue the adventures of Roseanne Juzynski. The original idea for my second novel was to do a sort of spin-off about a side character that was featured in the first. It was supposed to be a deeply personal, dead serious exploration of mature problems. The story made perfect sense in my head, but the original draft fell apart two-thirds in. When that happened, I considered myself good for nothing, because I couldn’t transfer the greatest story ever from head to paper.
Roseanne’s Summer Vacation, on the other hand, was born out of a promise, which I made to one of my students in June 2025. I promised that I would write a novel for them, so they could have something to enjoy whenever dealing with personal problems. When sitting down at the beginning of summer to write it, I changed my approach. I told myself Don’t write the greatest story ever. Write for fun. Have fun when writing, and hopefully the readers, and that ONE reader the thing is meant for, will have fun, too.
That’s the origin of the novel, but you might have noticed the peculiar subtitle under the Afterword section. It actually refers to the tiny border between fact and fiction because, in contrast to my first novel filled with magical realism, I wanted my second one to be as grounded in reality as possible. Let me explain:
Although the Land of Po is a made-up, ironic spin on Poland, the majority of cities, streets, and places are actually real. I even considered including a map of Gdynia and the Bay of Gdańsk in the novel, but I decided against it because this would be too overwhelming for the readers unfamiliar with Polish geography, and on top of that, this is not a fantasy novel.
Still, the places mentioned and described do exist. That’s why I included photographs in each of the four sections of the book that present individual days of the school trip. However, I did not write captions explaining what these places are. It’s something you have to figure out from the novel, and I encourage you to look them up on the Internet after you are done reading.
In addition, the Khatanga ship was real, but I took certain creative liberties with it. The ship was due to be destroyed in Spring, 2025, but its final voyage to Denmark got delayed until the 19th of June.(1) Given the fact that I didn’t want to mess with the strict timeline of my novel, Khatanga—in the story—is still in Gdynia between the 8th and the 11th of July, and its original location in the harbour was slightly altered for storytelling purposes.
What else is real? The Korean shebang is mostly real: Bureau 39, RedStar OS, Kim Il-sung University, and the Pukchang concentration camp do exist in real life. If you want to get to know the history of how North Korean espionage network used to function overseas in an entertaining nutshell, then I encourage you to read Paul Fischer’s A Kim Jong-Il Production: The Extraordinary True Story of a Kidnapped Filmmaker, His Star Actress, and a Young Dictator's Rise to Power (2015).
The Bitcoin subplot was inspired by the real-life incident of a Welsh computer engineer losing a hard drive containing 7,500 bitcoins. He is still trying to retrieve it from a local landfill, twelve years later.(2) Another inspiration, this time for the subplot of Murphy, came in the form of an article about a real American family that relocated to Russia and documented their experiences on YouTube.(3)
Last but not least, allow me to end this section the way I ended it in the first novel: If you enjoyed the novel, thank you very much for taking the time to read it. If you didn’t like it, I’m sorry it failed to hit your taste. I’m not a professional writer, but I tried to do my best.
To avoid any confusion, I include this disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. Any similarity to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. But still… faint traces of all the characters live on inside many people I encountered in my life, and I thank the real Roseanne Juzynski for believing in me. I believe in you just as much, and I will always remember your sincerity and kindness. I feel grateful that I met you.
Ollie Henning
November, 2025
Book Cover design by Ollie Henning (on the basis of an image from Pixabay, used in accordance with Content License. Author of the original image: Pawel Pacholec)
All the other images used in the novel were made by and belong to Ollie Henning.
© All rights reserved
1) Khatanga Leaves Port of Gdynia - “We’re Removing Russian Scrap from Poland” (https://dailymare.com/news/khatanga-leaves-port-of-gdynia---were-removing-russian-scrap-from-poland,1476).
2) Man who lost bitcoin fortune in Welsh tip explores purchase of entire landfill (https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/feb/10/man-who-lost-bitcoin-fortune-in-welsh-tip-explores-purchase-of-entire-landfill).
3) Father-of-three who fled to Russia to escape 'woke' America 'is sent to the front line to fight for Putin' (https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14926587/Father-three-fled-Russia-escape-woke-America-sent-line-fight-Putin.html).
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