Hi!

I was born in the Netherlands in 1982—the same year Michael Jackson's thriller was released. Also the year that Spielberg's E.T. became the highest-grossing film of the decade. Yes, a year full of quality productions. :-) We lived in Crooswijk, Rotterdam. Just your typical neighborhood of crazy old ladies, drug dealers, street fights, young boys playing football until late, and the odd lost artist due to low living cost. I went to high school in Kralingen, just across the ditch, and quickly socialized with the kids who played hockey, wore Timberland shoes and had a way more sophisticated roll of their "rrrrr" than I did. Soon, back in Crooswijk, they made sneering remarks about how my own accent was turning posh. 

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During my time at high school I was heavily involved in the cultural activities on offer: I sang, I organized school parties with the Party Commission (I know, that was a thing! Isn't it swell!) and... I wrote. I had chosen a pseudonym and wrote cynical columns for the schoolpaper—venting about teachers, rules... it was probably as far as my teenage rebellion went.

 

During my years at uni I wrote a monthly column for the student & career magazine Nobiles, and frequently delivered in-depth articles about career topics. I scored an internship at travel magazine Columbus. A few months after I graduated, I landed a job as a copywriter. From there, my career in marketing progressed into more executive marketing roles. But the desire to write fiction never left me.

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I followed an intensive course on Creative Writing in Amsterdam, at the Schrijversvakschool Amsterdam. I also opted for a Masterclass Creative Writing by a well-known Dutch writer, Thomas Rosenboom. Meanwhile, I wrote an entire children's book that I flushed down the toilet. I wrote the first version of what now is Blame The Dogs (so I would have been in my late twenties/early thirties). A while later, I wrote a new version. The novel received some interest from two Dutch literary agents. Things could actually go somewhere at this point in my life.

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Then we decided to move to New Zealand. Suddenly, building a new life was more important than revising the novel I had started. The kids were three and five years old when we moved.

 

And last year (summer of 2024) we repeated the exercise again by moving from NZ to Houston, Texas. YES, Houston. Do I think it is a beautiful city? Hell no. Do I love the people? Hell yeah. Having travelled as much as I have, and having lived on three different continents, I can confidently say that Texas has been incredibly kind to me; made me feel so welcome and included (perhaps more than anywhere else). The flavor of a place is—in the end—not created by the shade of the ocean, or the beauty of the landscapes. I love all that, sure. But the flavor of a place comes from the people—their warmhearted kindness. Their diversity. Their depth of character. Their individuality. And it is a great place to finally launch my writing career. Exciting times!