Category Archives: Writing

Detective stuff

Dear reader, A few years ago I started writing a detective. That in itself is already a bit of an oddity as I am mainly writing fantasy and science fiction. To make things more interesting I planned to make the detective a pagan. (If you don’t know what a pagan is, you can follow this link to Google and find… (more…)


Writer. Do your research.

Dear reading fiction-writer. Yes, you. Do you research? If you write historical fiction, you probably do. You need to know the proper time-frame and era that your characters live in. You need to know about food, transport, weapons, social classes and so forth. When you write contemporary fiction, you’ll probably hound the news and modern cultural information. When you write… (more…)


I write like…

Dear reader, There is an fun website out there which tries to compare a person’s writing to that of famous writers. I gave it a shot with an excerpt from the latest part of Hilda 10 that I had written, and this came out of its analysis: I write like Cory Doctorow I Write Like by Mémoires, journal software. Analyze… (more…)


How not to write a book review

Dear reader, At times I come across a book review where the reviewer is doing it wrong. Oh, you might ask, how can a book review be wrong? After all, a review is highly personal, nobody can tell me how I write my review? True, in the end it is up to the reviewer. However, there are a few things… (more…)


First drafts

It’s true. And first drafts usually aren’t perfect. Not even mine. Now wait a moment, scribbler, what do you mean Not even mine? Yes, I see the frowns arise and hear the snickers erupt. Still I have found that there is a huge different in writing draft versions of stories from one writer to the other. I don’t know where that… (more…)


Write what you know

Write what you know. That is an advice often given to writers, especially the ones who start their first journey into the realms of words, paragraphs and pages, lots of pages. It is sound advice, because when you write about what you know, you can be fairly certain that you don’t make a silly one of yourself (and I deliberately… (more…)


Happy new year!

Dear reader, To you we all wish a on behalf of myself, Hilda the wicked witch and William (and cats), Lily Marin, Daniel and Rayko from Bactine, and Charisma, Hilda’s little sister. (Did I just hear a ‘crappedy crap‘?)


A guestpost by Melissa McPhail, author of Cephrael’s Hand

Dear reader, Please enjoy this guest post by Melissa McPhail, author of the spellbinding epic fantasy, Cephrael’s Hand. Then read on to learn how you can win huge prizes as part of this blog tour, including a Kindle Fire, $450 in Amazon gift cards, and 5 autographed copies of the book. One of the most enticing aspects of writing fantasy is developing a… (more…)


One book, two languages

Dear reader, I am venturing into an experiment. Through a series of events I had an idea for a new story. (Reminder to events: kindly  stop eventing for a while, my box with story-ideas is still overflowing. Thank you.) One of the events is co-writing a story with a friend. As she is Dutch and much better at Dutch than… (more…)


The rewrite

Dear reader and fellow writer, I think every writer who doubts herself or himself enough has this feeling occasionally: the need to rewrite. It happens when you look back at what you wrote,  a few years ago, perhaps your first book, or the second one, and you see that is not up to the standard you have achieved. That paragraph… (more…)


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