For Mathilde Schmidt, difficulties are merely challenges. Now 86, the self-described "strong-minded person" survived a childhood in Germany when even obtaining an education was difficult in a society where boys were favored over girls.

Her teenage and young-adult years were marked by World War II dangers and deprivations. Post-Liberation, Schmidt was a prisoner of war of the French, "who were not kind to their German charges," she recalls.

Schmidt — then Mathilde Apelt — worked hard for a postwar university education. She immigrated to the United States, where she founded a floor maintenance company, obtained an advanced degree in education, and has taught math, education and German courses.

She also met Leo Schmidt, her husband of 54 years, with whom she has four children and six grandchildren.

Life experiences and her imagination, coupled with a love of writing, have led Schmidt to her latest accomplishment:

Author.

It's been a year since Schmidt self-published "My Life on Two Continents," an autobiography. She has completed "The Lake Dwellers," a collection of fictional short stories. And she has started work on another book of fiction and mystery, about an Austrian castle.

"I did not know I had a talent for writing, especially with English as a second language," said Schmidt, who has taken writing classes through communityand university extension courses. "I go to sleep dreaming of characters, and I wake up with ideas." Schmidt, drawing on girlhood diaries as well as packets of family letters kept by her late mother, was tuned into the world of self-publishing by a daughter.

The goal of leaving a memoir for her family expanded into the idea of sharing her stories with a greater universe.

Appropriately enough, Schmidt contracts with the iUniverse.com self-publishing site. Her first book has a first printing of 250 copies. About 50 copies have been sold, through a variety of sales venues, and she received 40 copies for personal distribution.

Schmidt, who calls herself a "compulsive" reader, also has donated "My Life on Two Continents" to local libraries. This fall, she will appear at "meet-the-author" events at the Hayward and Pleasanton libraries.

The woman who started out writing in longhand now has a computer. She also has an editor and publicist.

Self-publishing isn't easy, Schmidt acknowledges. Book prices escalate when working through "middle-man" sales agencies. Self-publishing costs can range from several hundred to several thousand dollars, depending on the services purchased.

"My Life on Two Continents" is available for $20.95 at Jordan's Village Books in Castro Valley, the Hayward Area Historical Society Corner Shop in Hayward, iUniverse.com, mschmidtbooks.com and other book Web sites.