My passion for prose didn’t start with my editing career. I have been writing since childhood, and my dream of becoming a writer took shape in my early teens.
But, as you can read in my short memoir A Dyslexic Editor?, realizing this dream hasn’t been easy. It demanded determination and stamina to get to a professional writing and editing level.
This page shows the results of my many years of hard work.
It is my prayer that my writings will entertain you, help you consider the things that matter, and inspire you to pick up your pen and start changing the world with redemptive prose.
I’m going to be honest with you. Fear of failure has kept me from sending my stories out to publishers. But I’ve decided to change that. As I’m publishing my stories here for you to enjoy, I’m also sending them out to magazines and writing contests. I’ve been encouraging other writers for years; now, it’s time for me to step out myself as well.
Please, let me know how you like the stories.
I was born and raised a Christian in the Netherlands, where I spent most of my early life—until I met my lovely Israeli wife on the walls of Jerusalem. When we got married, in 2015, I moved to Israel to build a new existence in the Aravah desert. By now, three kids have joined our little fold.
Since boyhood, I’ve had a passion for music and arts—I loved painting and playing drums, guitars, and piano; later, I started singing classical, gospel, metal, and everything in between.
Books, however, were a mystery to me. I loved leafing through them, sniffing them, posing for pictures with them—but the idea of reading them never crossed my mind. But when Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings hit the theaters, I couldn’t run from books anymore. And ever since, I have been a book junkie.
I had been writing stories and essays all my life—not knowing that real writers are readers—but that moment I was determined: I was going to take my writing seriously.
Over the decades, I became increasingly insatiable. I had to understand how this writing stuff worked. What makes a book suspenseful? How do you write dialogue that’s technically correct and has the tension to keep readers up at night?
I read every book I could find on writing and editing techniques. From 2013 to 2022, I studied at the Institute for Writers to deepen my knowledge and experience. From 2020 to 2022, I studied editing at the University of Washington, further honing my skills in the written word.
From 2023 to 2024, I took an additional writing course at the Schrijversacademie in the Netherlands to ensure that my Dutch writing and editing was up to par as well.
After making aliyah (a migration to Israel), God blessed me with a job as a copyeditor for a multinational editing company, where I later got promoted to senior editor.
But the books and magazines I worked on weren’t very engaging. In 2020, it was time to start on my own as a freelance Christian nonfiction editor—I started Your Best Story.
Today, I spend my days editing and teaching for agencies, keeping my business alive, and editing and coaching Christian writers.
It was the work of writers like J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis that inspired me to invest in my writing. So, I started writing fantasy (which, following Lewis, I prefer to call fairy tales). Later, as my bookshelf grew, I developed a taste for science fiction, too.
I loved writing the stories that took shape in my mind. They often began as small ideas or pictures emerging from somewhere in space. And as I wrote, the worlds behind them grew, countries and planets became distinct, and plots clawed into plots.
Unfortunately, I allowed fear to torpedo my ambitions. I feared people would hate my prose, characters, and plots. And for many years, I focused on helping other writers publish their stories instead of stepping out with my own.
As I write this, anno 2025, I’m embarking on a new adventure: I’m going to re-edit and submit my stories to publishers.
I can’t decide what I love more, fiction or nonfiction. But the magic that happens when literary techniques are used in nonfiction makes my heart beat faster.
Therefore, I’m particularly interested in narrative nonfiction. This can be anything from personal stories, testimonies, and memoirs, to creative books on Christian theology, music, history, philosophy, psychology, linguistics, science, and writing techniques.
In short: I love everything that’s written to engage.
And I will continue to write what I love, probably till the day the Lord calls me home.
Better is a little with righteousness than great revenues with injustice.
Don’t let evil conquer you, but conquer evil by doing good.
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