About

My first thriller was published ‘”Bulgaars labyrint”

I did a writing course and wrote a story that included some drawings. The teacher refused to comment on the drawings, because it was a writing course and no drawing course.

My church marriage in Ukraine for the Ukraine Orthodox Church was a “never a full moment” event. My family and friends had a week in Ukraine they will never ever forget. Too bad I did not speak Ukraine language, but I would catch up. Though only many years later after the marriage failed. And my Russian was all right.

I worked as a librarian for the tax lawyers at Deloitte financial company. I liked the fast business language. And it changed my view on the world – from creative to economic.

After four year voluntary journalist for Dutch “Balkan Bullein” I did a failed start as freelance journalist. Many stories but selling those was hard.

In the bitter cold January month I joined my Bulgarian friends in Plovdiv to celebrate the succesfull Velvet Peaceful Revolution. Serbia and Georgia and Ukraine were the next countries to topple their dictators.

For a business friend I sold an historic map of Lithuania to the national museum in Vilnius. The map was very good and I liked the sale.

I was volunteer in an American summer camp. I felt very much at home amongst the other volunteers from all over the world. I started drawing again and the other volunteers were very positive about my drawings.

Following the spirit of Gorbachev’s changes in Russia (“glasnost” and “perestrojka”), I started to study Russian. We started with 20 students, but when the verbs and the cases started, half of them dropped. I continued.

My first Bulgarian holiday was exactly in the week of the failed August coup in the Soviet Union. Too bad I did not speak Bulgarian. But in the next years I would catch up. The language is interesting because it has little in common wirh English and German and French, that I learned in the 1980’s.

I took part in a Frisian language thriller writing competition. The secretary for the organizing committee came to see me in person. He wanted to make sure I had written the thriller myself.

I showed a number of drawings to a friend, who was museum director and art historian. He said my work was all right, but it did not fit into any art history line.

The drawing teacher in secondary school spoke very bad about my fantasy creatures. And I loved them so much. I thought she was right. So I hated her and and her classes. Her attitude became for me a blue print for bad managers in my later office jobs.

There was a poetry reading competition in Dutch in the primary school. I was too shy to register, but I prepared secretly a poem. When the competition was about to finish, I took a breath, raised my hand and asked the teacher to participate. He had a soft spot for me and agreed.