Creative Writing

In my twenties I published a few of my short stories in the ‘Hollands Maandblad’, a leading Dutch literary monthly, and in 1995 in a short story anthology by the same Amsterdam publishers Uitgeverij Contact. In 1995, I quite suddenly left Holland and I hardly ever spoke or read or wrote any Dutch again. I have since lived mostly in the UK.

Below are a few of my early stories, translated to English, and an English film script I wrote with someone.

• Early Stories
  Throughout the 1990s, I published short stories in Dutch literary magazines. I translated six of those stories to English and I rewrote 'Waiting Room' ('Wachtkamer'), which was my first serious publication in Holland, it being my first nation-wide (both in a leading literary magazine and in an anthology of short stories). I've just rewritten it, new title and all: The Crying Plant.
  
  
• Houten Kaders (Wooden Frames)
  'Houten Kaders'('Wooden Frames') was a weird novel ('postmodern' as my Groningen University Professor labelled it), partly autobiographical, that I wrote at the age of 22 and 23 while in the process of breaking with my extremely strict religious past (and with almost all my friends and my family and with everything I ever believed in).
  
  
• Blue Blood River English
  I worked on this script with a British friend for a number of years (and then I fell out with him). We got a fantastic, very flattering rejection from the BBC Drama Serials department: "I enjoyed reading Blue Blood River English and thought that it had an exciting premise and great potential for comedy."