Jan van den Dool
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When I went to primary school, I always had to come home immediately after school to help my father in the vegetable garden. But, there were many ditches along the way and it was a lot of fun to jump over them. Once it happened that I didn't make it to the other side... When there was ice on the ditches, it was even more exciting. Would the ice hold already? I liked primary school a little bit, but I preferred to play outside. Writing alone, I liked to do that. Especially stories. We called it drafting. In winter, we always sat together in the living room at home. We were five boys and three girls. There was no TV then. One was reading or knitting, the other was playing on the floor with a truck with all kinds of matchboxes stacked on it. And my older brothers were playing chess or draughts. I really liked the book of Dik Trom and Alone in the World. As soon as I no longer have to work, I started writing books.
First Money Transport in the Night, then The Man in Black and then Night Riders. All three books are published by Callenbach. After that, a book was published almost every year. It is very nice to write for children from the age of eight or nine. But many older children also like to read them. 'Exciting,' they all say. My wife and I have three sons and now also several grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Sometimes I see one of them in front of me when I write a story, but not always.
I write because:
· it's fun to do
· I like it when children enjoy my books
· The good thing is that there is plenty of choice of Christian books
My stories usually arise when I am writing behind the keyboard of my computer. When I start a story, I don't know how it ends. I have a nice room in which I can write very quietly. I prefer to be alone. Also, I usually don't have the radio or music on.
The publisher's editor always gives very nice instructions to make the story even better. After my second book, I took a course, 'Writing for children' at Script. There are people who said: 'Night riders is even more beautiful than the other two.' So I learned from it.
