Author Heidi Roth’s Lumina book’s journey to the world will begin spring 2025 in the representation of literary agent Elina Ahlback’s agency. Roth has self-published her three books so far, and for Lumina she created the entire Spellpolaris story world, which is not only Roth’s own publishing house, but also a store and trademark.
– I wanted to keep all the strings in my hands and that’s why I ended up founding my own company. The goal was to publish first this book in Finnish and then write it to English and then starting to expand Spellpolaris into an international story world, from which could be produce other formats and licensed products. The international journey of the Spellpolaris story world and Lumina has just begun, but it is encouraging that the book has been well received in Finland. I’m really excited that Ahlbäck Agency takes this story abroad, managing the worldwide book, film, TV and theater rights. Many years ago, I already had an intuitive idea that Elina would be the right person to understand Lumina’s international potential. Now it is the right time and I hope that my years of work will become familiar to all those who want to get to know Finnish and Karelian mythology wrapped in an interesting story, says Heidi Roth.
Lumina, which is Roth’s first book for young adults was published in 2024. The story draws on Karelian and Finnish mythology, spell poems and the Kalevala. The fascinating Spellpolaris world is becoming an unique phenomenon in the Finnish literary field: there are plans for board and video games, nature escape experience, fan products and various media contents. Spellpolaris has acquired license rights to Lumina-related products in nine different EU trademark categories. Spellpolaris’ IPR rights are managed by Kati Repo from Kream Helsinki, which specializes in intellectual property rights. In Finland, the gamification of the story world is handled by another partner of Spellpolaris, Lippo Luukkonen from the Doppo Agency. Lumina’s illustrator and Heidi Roth’s long-time collaborator Jenni Nadin is also a big part of Spellpolaris.
– It’s great to work with this wonderful team! I started developing the Spellpolaris world more than ten years ago, when I got the idea to combine authentic spell poems and Finnish mythology with a universally resonant adventure story. The whole time I had this idea in my mind, what would the story of a shaman girl based on Finnish and Karelian mythology be like if it had a Harry Potter-like witchcraft and a road movie-type travelogue of the Lord of the Rings trilogy at the same time.
Heidi Roth, a mother of two daughters, feels that Lumina was almost like her “third daughter”. The story is dedicated to Roth’s daughters and the author wants to highlight female characters from mythology in Lumina’s story.
– In my opinion, mythical female characters have received less attention in the history and storytelling of this genre, both in literature and in films, or they have been faded by patriarchy over time. I want to bring out female and girl characters that we can identify with from our heritage. In addition to the main character Lumina, important characters in my story include the Nordic matriarch Louhi, Maidens of Pohjola and various Finnish female goddesses from the prehistory, emphasizes Heidi Roth.
Link to Elina Ahlback Literary Agency’s new catalog: https://catalogue.ahlbackagency.com/children/#young
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