Amsterdam, 1942 In Nazi-occupied Amsterdam, survival means three choices:Adapt. Frank keeps his head down. Silence keeps him safe, until silence turns into complicity.Resist. Elise prints posters…
Drafting ideas:
It Never Stops – The Soundtrack of a Trilogy
If the Frank & Celestina trilogy had a theme song, it would be Sketches of Spain by Nits. Not the Miles Davis piece, but the haunting Dutch song from 1983. It is quiet, elegiac, and full of echoes. It begins with the line:“The streets of Barcelona are filled with blood and rain.” That lyric became the seed for the first […]
A Trilogy – Completed
Origins: Blood and RainIn 2013, as I was finishing Under the Black Sand – my debut novel – I started thinking about what to do next. I had proven I could write and complete a novel, it felt like quite the achievement and I wanted to try it again! Apply everything I had learned, avoid […]
A Sky Without Stars – Pre-Order
A Sky Without Stars is almost here. It has been a long journey, both for the book and for the larger story. The final novel in the Frank & Celestina trilogy began at a Dutch air force base in January 2023, a month before Mont Noir was published. My son had an introduction day there, the base was […]
Announcing: A Sky Without Stars
It’s finally time. And I’m excited! A new novel is on the way, my fourth.And the third and final installment in the Frank and Celestina saga. I never intended to write a series, but after Blood and Rain, I wanted to explore the characters further. Frank was interesting, but Celestina demanded more time. Why was she […]
A New Novel – coming soon
Today is my birthday and I feel like giving you things. My books. All of them. And a quick update on what’s coming.
Memory Lane:
Candles – a short story
Ben kissed her on the cheek, slipped past her and into the kitchen. He returned with a large cake with candles lit. Francisca gestured him to quickly put the cake on the table and inhaled. Hesitated. This wasn’t right.
Reviews and indy authors
As mentioned in a previous post, my novels are self-published. This means I have no means of displaying posters in city centres or underground stations, they won’t be lying face up in bookstores and there won’t be any morning television appearances where I explain where the spark came from and what I’m trying to tell […]
Micro Blogging
Not every blog post is created equal. Some are long, some short. But they are all meant to be read. And sometimes it can be good to throw a simple idea out in the open. So here is my new experiment. Micro blogging on a mobile device and automatically sharing it on social media. Oh, […]
Paperback Writer – how to get them?
Late in 2022, I “remastered” my two existing novels, Under the Black Sand, and Blood and Rain. I made slight changes to the contents and redesigned the books. The cover of Black Sand is now completely different. Blood and Rain is now available in a hardcover for the first time. Both paperbacks are now larger, […]
Fan Fiction
I once tried my hand at fan fiction. You can see some of the results on the front page as the old posts rotate beneath my books. It was going well, I saw the world in front of my eyes, I liked Luna, the main character and the story was based on an incompleted work, […]
Afternoon – a short story
Where are my bedsheets, he asked? You will all be sleeping with us, she replied. They asked why, and she just smiled. Didn’t want to tell them that if they died, they would die together so that no one would have to mourn the others. They would live together or die together.
The Performer – a short story
The audience was still stomping and clapping, calling his name. It annoyed him slightly. What did they want from him? The same old songs he’d played for years on end? The same banter between the songs? I wrote this one after… blah, blah, blah.
