What is your book all about?

First: thank you, Author’s Lounge, for this opportunity.

My new novel Nicolaes Nimbus is about the Search for Immortality, about science vs ancient magic, about artificial intelligence vs sorcery.
A group of extremely clever rich German and Dutch scientists hope to live forever. They search for different possibilities to prolong life and spend lots of money to reach their goal. Then they hear about a wizard who was supposed to have lived ages ago – Nicolas Nimbus. If Nicolaes Nimbus is still alive and has found the secret of immortality through magic; the scientists want to find him – to examine him in their labs! But they need master painter Rein Vulpes to set a trap for Nicolaes Nimbus. Then high tech science meets ancient magic…

What inspired you to write the book?

Life itself is so complex, interesting and intriguing – and then there are the miracles, the unexplainable things, the scary sides of our behavior, the imposing wonder of the universe… That is what I write about, novel after novel; Nicolaes Nimbus is about the magic of our past and the wonder of our future. I read lots of nonfiction books and these days it is especially the Artificial Intelligence that inspires me. Where will all these new inventions lead us to? Will we all be happier and independent, or will we dance to the tune of weird scientists? Things go very fast these days, many new inventions make us frown. Tycoons really invest enormous amounts of money in their search for immortality. No one can predict the future. No science fiction writer from the past wrote about such a thing as the World Wide Web. Our past is so very interesting – and our future is so intriguing; I love to combine this in my novels.

What is your target audience for the book?

I write for everyone who loves Magic, Mystery and Adventure. That is my specialty, those three words are on the covers of many of my novels. And to be honest, I never think about a certain audience when I write a novel – I can only write what comes up to my mind. Magic, Mystery and Adventure was already on the covers from books that were published by the prestigious publishing house De Arbeiderspers in Amsterdam.

What do you hope readers could get out from your book?

Entertainment! You can read it as a thriller, but every clever person will be able to read between the lines. And then it becomes a book with odd surprises… I always give an explanation at the end of a story, so everyone will eventually understand what it was all about. Chapter after chapter the reader will get food for thought and the text will certainly stimulate one’s fantasy.

What are your future goals/plans for the book?

I write in Dutch and then translate into English. The novel is published in English now: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Koos-Verkaik/author/B001JXJGMA

Soon it will also be available in French, Spanish, Greek and Hindi. All contracts signed.

And something more about yourself.

I was born in The Netherlands, live in a nice town not far from the grey North Sea.

I started writing when I was 7, was Europe’s youngest writer of comics at the age of 16 and my first novel was published when I was 18 years old. Since then I have published more than 70 different titles: www.koosverkaik.com

And many new books will be published soon, I recently signed contracts for more than 30 different books. I also write series of children’s books. My series Alex and the Wolpertinger is very successful and I am working on volume 14 now. Never had a writer’s block – I write each and every day.