The heart of the deal.

Good evening.

A week ago, I announced the news across social media but it’s only here that I’ll give you the full details for those who are nosey enough to continue.

After years of graft, and I’ll get into that, I have signed a publishing deal with HarperCollins for the release of The Counterfeiter of Auschwitz.

If this was an award-winning biopic, we would open in a sepia-toned flashback.
A young Paul Schiernecker sits at the family computer, staring intently at the dirty clunky keys and beginning a story.
He prints it out on perforated paper and stares at what he has created.

For as long as I can remember, I have written. To paraphrase Rob Auton; I’m here for the human experience. I’ll sit back at parties and watch other people. It’s been both a strength and a weakness, almost imagining that all these flawed characters are my own creations and that I can squeeze something true and creative out of them. When I was young, I’d write plays for my brothers to perform with me. Sometimes I’d ask them to commit these to cassette tape. Other times, I’d ask if they could perform them in front of our parents. The most memorable of these being my reimagining of Grease: The Musical (including oversized bomber jackets and choreography to die for).

At school, I read everything. I was one of those kids who was sent into the year group above to read from their bookshelves when I’d devoured everything offered for my peers. As they say, the best writers are avid readers.

I studied English for as long as I could. In a conversation with my college tutor (the wonderfully deranged Elsa Harwood), she begged me not to study Law at university because my talents were in writing. Nevertheless, I persisted. I was a bad university student but it did give me three years where I could develop some good friends and some bad habits. I’d stay up late writing songs, scripts and stories only to miss 9am lectures. I was also drunk, a lot. I smoked like a chimney and was a performative male before the term had really emerged. Still, I was writing.

When I graduated, I joined forces with two friends and we wrote and filmed our first feature film, which is one of two IMDB credits to my name to this day. It didn’t cause the impact we expected but scratched an itch I had.

Then, I got a job and tried to be a functioning human. I worked in data entry and got the nickname “Spider Fingers” from my brilliant manager, Paula, because I typed at such a rate that… my fingers looked like spiders.

Once I had developed into something that felt like a career, my focus was drawn back to writing again. The problem was that I couldn’t work out how to finish a story without the help of a tutor or any definition of it. Through therapy, I talked about my perfectionism (since determined to be undiagnosed OCD) and fear of completing anything for fear of it being done. Since then, I’ve not been able to stop.

I wrote my first novel, Situation One, in a year. I wrote the next one, Visions of Violet, in a month. Situation One was a Bret Easton Ellis rip off about my first year of university, told from multiple perspectives. Visions of Violet had a very bizarre ending which was far too close to the twist in the Robert Pattinson film Remember Me. It wasn’t good but I was writing.

I wrote Visions during the first National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) that I took part in. For all the trash developments that have emerged about that organisation, it did me well for a decade, ensuring that I was putting together a draft and then spending time after getting it into a presentable state and sending it out to agents.

Back then, you had to print out the first three chapters and post them to agents. Then, you’d wait three months and they’d post them back to you with a decline response that was often photocopied with your name scrawled at the top. I have kept every one of those rejection letters, knowing that they would be funny in time.

In 2020, when the world got flip turned upside down, I recognised that it was an opportunity for me to write. I was living alone in a small top floor flat, only really communicating with people on Friday nights when someone would organise a quiz. I was running 5km every day and drinking a bottle of wine (at least every night). It was in these circumstances that I started work on what I called The Counterfeiter of Auschwitz. In its original iteration, there was no framing device and the deaths of characters were at odds with what I now recognise as being good plotting. In addition, I stuck vehemently to historical fact, often including long paragraphs on the background, spending days researching the warring factions and the camps. My search history for the period was worrying.
It felt different to anything I had written before and I was reading a lot of Vonnegut at the time, which definitely helped. The tone of my protagonist, Georg, is my favourite thing about the book, based on my great grandfather’s way of holding court when we visited his residential care home.

By September, I had not only written but had edited a manuscript. I sent it out to ten agents, picked based on their specific asks. Fortunately, these submissions were now made by email. Within two days, I had a request for the full manuscript. Using this as leverage, I emailed the other agents and told them I’d had a request for a full. I had six requests for the full. In ten years of writing and submitting, this had never happened. Something was different about this story. I needed to write all of those stories to get to a point where I could tell this in the correct way.

By January 2021, I was in conversation with the gentleman who would eventually become my agent. We talked about a lot of reference points and potential changes but what really got me was that he understood what I was trying to do. He got the tone. He loved Georg!

A year later, I signed to my agency. It felt monumental. It still does. I am amongst fantastic company with them. Everyone I have spoken to and dealt with there has shown me such care and attention. It’s where I should be.

After a lot of edits, we got a pack together and my agent sent it out to editors at various publishing houses. This was 2023. I know because we had been on a date to see The Whale and were in the pub when he called me to discuss it.

From there, time moved slow and fast.

A publisher in Italy picked it up first. They offered an advance. I’m not going to be crass by talking numbers but I felt like I was getting away with something. The publisher ended up taking the Spanish release when they expanded their business.

Then the rights in both Slovenia and Romania went. Again, amazing. Still, my mother kept asking when she could read it in English.

In April 2025, I received a call from my agent to say that it looked like a deal was on the table.

In October, I had a lovely call with the person who is now my editor at HarperCollins. She was so complimentary and again, seemed to get what I was trying to do. I cried on the call. This is very much the dream coming true.

Because I know you’ll ask, it’s currently scheduled for release in Spring 2027. There are still edits to do and I am learning so much as we go. It’s so exciting. I am so grateful to the team behind me.

In therapy, I always talked about the realisation that Matt Damon had on winning an Oscar, and how outside recognition doesn’t match internal self worth.
I am so proud of where I am at and what I have achieved. It wouldn’t be possible without the incredible support system I’ve had and continue to have. The internal self worth is self worthing. That doesn’t mean you can stop congratulating me.