January 1939. When the British Foreign Minister receives a phone call from Berlin, Amsterdam must be warned. Forces within the Dutch government are working on staging a terrorist attack on their…
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Free. Worthless or priceless?
It is the end of winter, summer is coming. The weather today is nice, I drove home from work with the top open. One of the simple pleasures in my life. Driving with the warm wind in my hair. Summer is when people read books. They lie on sunbeds on beaches, besides swimming pools in […]

Translations? How? Why?
I’m sure you are all aware that I’m not a traditionally published author with million sales to my name. I write when I can and when I feel like it, I sell a handful of books a year, probably not enough to go grocery shopping… once. But you write because you want to. Because you […]

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, […]

Happy New 2023!
Dear reader,2022 is gone and 2023 is here. A year is different for us all. Some may experience it as the best year of their lives, while others are forced to stare into the void. 2022 was another strange year. Covid is still here. I lost a friend to the pandemic. My last grandparent left […]

End of Year Sale!
My eBooks are distributed through Smashwords. It takes the work out of having to individually publish them on the multiple platforms. Only Amazon and the physical books are published separately. Smashwords has a end-of-year sale and they offer authors to participate. As I have three books there, I was more than happy to take part. […]
Memory Lane

Verrader – een kort verhaal
De oude windmolen stond aan de andere kant van het dorp. Marloes volgde het pad, legde de fiets naast het hek. Zij trok een oud luik open en legde de wapens neer.

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 […]

Laying an Egg
Writing a novel is a huge undertaking. Millions of people try it, but only a few manage to finish it. Sometimes, when we are in the middle of the novel writing process, we get tired of the characters and the universe we’ve created. We shelf the project, and many never return to it. Short stories […]
State of Things
The blog is quiet on the surface, but don’t be fooled. Here is what’s up. My second novel, Blood and Rain, is as good as complete. A few minor tweaks, then a bit of photography, cover design, trailer and a Twitter storm. The site went offline in September 2015, as my hosting account was shut […]

Resurrected
By villia 4 Comments
My blog was hosted with FatCow, an American hosting provider. In September 2015, that all went wrong. The account was deleted after my partner which I shared the account with found discrepancies in how he was being charged. He did warn me that the account would go offline, but I was away at the time […]

Becoming an Author
An overnight success is years in the making. I’m not saying I’m a successful author. Not in the commercial sense. I may have sold a few hundred copies of Under the Black Sand, but that is not commercial success. Blood and Rain is coming in just under two weeks and it may sell 10 copies. […]
Everything is Possible
If a book is good, or at least popular, chances are that someone will make a film based on it. But how often does the reverse happen? Under the Black Sand wasn’t meant to be a novel. It started as a short film. I wrote the screenplay in the Netherlands, where I live, but the […]
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