About me

My name is Gaby van Halteren, I was born and raised in Nuremburg, Germany, and I have been living and working in the Netherlands for quite some time now.

In my day job (or my night job, since I am a night owl) I am a copywriter and translator but from an early age on - and blessed with a vivid imagination - I have been writing poems and stories. I started out in German but soon added English and later Dutch as well. I love being able to write and create in three different languages, whether it's a novel or blog posts and articles.

When I was young I swore I would always be writing, but, as so often is the case, life got in the way big time (just like John Lennon said...). In a nutshell: I didn't get any words on paper or the computer for a very long time. Writing seems to be in my DNA, though, because about 1.5 years ago there was no way I could hold it back any longer – there were words inside of me and those words wanted to come out, needed to come out.

However, being the perfectionist that I am, I took the long and winding road, and before actually writing down more than story ideas I took courses on writing, bought books about self-publishing and marketing and signed up for just about every free webinar I could find online.

I learned a lot, retained most of it, and at the beginning of this year reached the point of no return: I started writing and building a world for my fantasy novels. Yes, plural; building a whole world for just one book seemed somewhat counterproductive to me, so I decided to make it at least a trilogy. At this moment I am writing the prequel for the trilogy, so make that four.

Along the still long and even more winding road ahead I also would like to write children's books. I even developed an idea that seems very promising; I'll tell you more about that as soon as I start working out the details.

For now my website is pretty basic; if you want to leave a comment, please use the contact form and I'll get back to you as soon as possible. Or just email me at gaby@puresimplewriting.com.