How old were you when you started writing?

I don't remember this, but my mother tells me that I started writing when I was seven. I made little books for my dolls and stuffed animals when I played school.

When I was a teenager I wrote poetry. My poetry was always about horses, sometimes about the sea and the wind.

I started writing poems, songs and short stories when I taught kindergarten in the Netherlands. Later I wrote stories and puppet plays for my children's birthday parties.

When I came to Canada I had to learn to speak and write English. I found it very difficult. I wrote my first English story in 1987. It was called The Unhappy Pinetree. In 1987, I went to Canadore College and attended my first creative writing course.

Where do you get your ideas?

I often get ideas from the research I do. My inspiration for Daughter of Light happened after I read the war experiences of Pietsje de Vries-van der Laan. She wrote about the horrible, cold winter of 1944, when there was no food, no fuel and no electricity and when she was pregnant with her second child. When I read that the mayor of her town had shown some humanity, I wanted to write about this story of hope and light in such dark times.

A Light in the Dunes was inspired by the legend of the witch of the bird sanctuary. We also had named our youngest daughter, Rikst after the witch and therefor I felt I owed her this story. Before it was a novel, Rixt of the Bird sanctuary was a short story, written during a creative writing class at Canadore College. My professor, Donna Sinclair wanted the class to write about female heroines. My love for the island of Ameland helped me shape this novel of mystery and adventure.

I dreamed one night about a movie, which I had seen as a ten-year old. It was the movie about the raid of the House of Detention by the members of the resistance, during the Second World War. The images of the dream were so vivid and so real that I knew I had to write about this event. When I started researching the events leading up to the raid and the raid itself, I realized I could not use the material in a novel. There was too much information. After many false starts of the book, I finally decided to scale down the raid and use it as a small part of the novel, A time to Choose.

Are you writing another book?

At the moment, I'm working on two new books. They are both set in the Netherlands during the Second World War. During my research I came across a picture of a young girl. She had a big smile on her face and in her arms she held a stengun. The caption underneath the picture stated that she was one of the most courageous couriers during the war and only seventeen when the war ended. I immediately started researching the couriers and my new novel is about a young girl, working as a courier during the war. This novel is scheduled to be published by Orca book Publishers in the fall of 2002.

The other book I'm working on is based on some family history. My great uncle Jan, owned a beautiful black stallion, named Held (Hero). Near the end of the war, the Germans stole horses, but my great uncle hid his treasure well. Until a few days before the liberation of Friesland, when fleeing soldiers took the horse. I won't tell you what happened to the horse, as not to give the ending away.

Why do your characters all have strange names?

My stories are all set in Friesland, a northern province in the Netherlands. The people speak the Frisian language. The names I have used in my stories are all Frisian except for Annelise, Annelise is the Danish spelling for Annelies. I believe it makes a story more authentic, more real, when I use the names that are common in the area I write about. Our own children have Frisian names, Romkje, Sjoerd and Rikst.

Johannes was named after my (Pake) Grandfather Johannes, who was a writer. Nynke was my (Beppe) Grandmother's name. Sietske is a common name for a girl. Marijke was the name of the youngest of the four princesses of at that time Queen Juliana and Prince Bernhard. She has since changed her name to Christina. And you know already why I chose Rikst and Rixt for A Light in the Dunes.

Ria is both Dutch and Frisian and is derived from Maria.