When there’s no time for sitting down to read a book, audio books still allow you to ‘read’ — I started listening to audio books in April 2020, after an upsetting incident on Twitter, which left me suffering from panic attacks and had sleepless nights for months. A fellow writer told me how it helped her to fall asleep when she concentrated on an audio book. I tried it…

The home for all fictional and non-fictional stories of five chapters or more — As many of you might have noticed, once a week I post a chapter of the series, Thirteen Years. I publish that series on ‘Serial Stories’, a publication I created a couple of months ago. Why Serial Stories? I used to post the chapters for Thirteen Years with a different publication, but there…

Finding your way through my ever-growing content — I started publishing stories on Medium in February 2021, and with my ever-growing content, those stories needed some kind of index. Except for the lists below, you can also find me here: Twitter Visit the Blogable Club, a site about writing and blogging and which I run together with my…

Shadows Of Mayday #1: Prologue: Lives thrown together on a plane, all end in the nothingness of the desert — “No! No! No! No!” the man in seat 12C chanted. People cried and moaned. Screamed. Some were in a near catatonic state, not making any sound. Panic stifled the air. Worse than the panic was the whining screech of the engines. Only minutes before, the plane quietly flew at cruising…

Access Denied #1: Two glasses of wine was all she needed to expose herself — “Get out! Just get out! And do not dare to come back! Ever! You are not welcome anymore.” The harsh voice followed Joyce as she almost ran from the bar. She knew exactly why she wouldn’t be welcome in this bar again; why she had been banned from yet another…

Southbank Love #1: It became their mutual pass-time, watching without acknowledging each other. — Adrian looked at Helen. She pretended not to notice him, but he knew she was fully aware of him. For weeks now, Adrian had been coming to the same spot every Friday afternoon and looked at the dark-haired beauty on the bench. Sometimes she read a book. Sometimes she just…

The future held promise — why else would they eye each other’s… desserts? — She drizzled the hot chocolate sauce on the vanilla ice cream and watched as little rivulets of brown ran down to settle in the cold. Ivy loved a good Dame Blanch, but today her thoughts were not only with her dessert. From the corner of her eye, she watched him…

Shoplifters, adulterous men, sugar daddies, and old ladies in new relationships — I could spot them a mile away — I had never intended to have a career in retail, but just sort of rolled into it. When in high school, I wanted to go to nursing school. I aced Science, Mathematics and Biology, so my career path seemed to be set out. Until the first patient puked on me…

I believe in spirituality, in something bigger than us. — Here in the Netherlands, there’s a running joke that the weather people can’t see two days into the future, because the weather forecast is always hit-and-miss. There can be a code yellow warning for heavy rains and thunder, but then it doesn’t happen, or there’s no warning and it does. …