Archive for the ‘Reflection’ Category

quote of the day

Thursday, February 10th, 2011

“Every person you have ever met, every person you will pass in the street today, is going to die. Living long enough, each will suffer the loss of his friends and family. All are going to lose everything they love in this world. Why would one want to be anything but kind to them in the meantime?” – Sam Harris (found on Reddit.com)

Food for thought, isn’t it?

In other (completely unrelated) news, I thought I messed up my risotto recipe tonight, but it turns out my food is still very much edible. It was very nommy! Yay! Now I don’t have to hate myself forever for ruining a perfect risotto. I just had a near-perfect one. I can live with that. :)

eye of the motherfucking tiger

Thursday, January 13th, 2011

Under the Read More link, you’ll find what I posted on Geekstijl the other day. This article shouldn’t bring you much news, but I wanted to share it anyway. For the non-Dutch among you, this is a recount of my latent dreams of wanting to become a writer all my life. I’ll elaborate for you first:

In September I sent in “Karakterfout” to a well-known Dutch fantasy magazine called Pure Fantasy in a fit of “what the hell”. I had this goal going on, if you can remember, that I wanted to be a published writer by age 30. And since I reached my 30th birthday this past summer, it was about time to do something about it.

So I sent Karakterfout, the 6K basis story for the whole (140K) Crystal saga that I wrote between 2006 and 2008. Unlike the rest of the Crystal stories, Karakterfout is written in Dutch, written in 2005 as a sort of experiment. It was later translated to English in “Call of Crystal” btw, for the ones among you what this story entailed.
Either way, I gave it a quick edit to weed out the worst of the spelling errors, inconsistencies and anglisicms, and then I sent it out. I kind of counted on rejection, but what I received seven weeks later was a couple of pages with EXCELLENT revision tips, and the question if I would please revise this piece, because with a good edit it might even be worth publishing.

When I sent a cheerful mail back with a word of thanks, because I could really do something with this, I got the reply that they were waiting for the revised version, because ‘a lot of people were really enthusiastic about this story’. HOLY SHIT :D Problem was, though, that this was only days before Nanowrimo, so I had other things to focus on first. But now with the new year and everything I’m all ready to rock.

I printed out the story yesterday, got my red pen out, and got to work with Holly Lisle’s One Pass Revision Method. To hell with what I said in 2009.
Let’s get this fucker on the road, everyone :)

(more…)

happy new 2011!!

Saturday, January 1st, 2011

Funny how I just blogged about New Years Eve parties always being a little bit special… this year, amidst hugs and fun and a few emotional moments, but mostly amidst laughter and a lot of love, Tijs went on his knees and asked Kat to marry him… about five minutes before midnight.

So we hit the champagne a little bit before the rest of the country, because she said yes and everyone was deliriously happy. What a way to end 2010. Onwards to 2011, I say :D