Mixed Spices

Mixed Spices contains various kinds of very short stories and a few poems. Some of the material is downright hilarious or as light as a fairytale, some of it is dark and gloomy, and some of it tries to trip you up the way certain zen koans do. Will you stay on your toes, crawl into the darkness, be incredibly ticked off, or hold your belly shaking with laughter? With Mixed Spices you can do it all.

"Your poem has got real feeling in it!" wrote Kevin Halford about The Wall, which is part of Mixed Spices, and Dutchman Frank Beunk commented: "Het hamert er wel in, moet ik je zeggen!"

Joy and sorrow, ability and powerlessness, reality and imagination, an enormous creativity. “Vreugde en verdriet, vermogen en onvermogen, werkelijkheid en onwerkelijkheid, een enorme creativiteit.” Marionne Zwartjens - de Poel after reading Mixed Spices.

The author started writing as a child, and hasn’t stopped yet. She wrote for increasingly larger and then international audiences, sometimes paid handsomely for it. Her creative drive, however, was hampered for a long time, until she found the key that unlocked the door. Now, bits and pieces sometimes come gushing out, almost entirely by themselves, and writing them is great fun.

It makes her feel like a fairy tiptoeing through the most beautiful gardens in which butterflies dance with cuddly rabbits and graceful does, and a little girl reaches out to take the hand of the shy little boy who lives next-door to run off and play and laugh and enjoy life like only little children can, and maybe the permanently homeless.