Meet
Nina Verheij
Author Exciting Books
Nina Verheij (b. 1984) is a Dutch author with a weakness for poffertjes and her cat Emmy. She was just born in Amsterdam, but moved as a 6-week-old toddler with cradle and all to Hillegom in the bulb region.
Her first slightly more serious writing effort as a child was a story about kittens born from a cake. That creative masterpiece remained in her elementary school library for several years after she gave it to them as a gift when she finished 8th grade.
Around that time, moreover, she wrote her first thriller, "A Grave Without a Name. In it, all the main characters had Power Rangers names. Not surprisingly, her favorite series to read at that time were Goosebumps, Fear Street and the blue Thriller books.
After high school, Nina decided to study Dutch language and culture at Leiden University. A choice she did not regret for one second. As icing on the cake she managed to finish her Master Language Control cum laude. Unfortunately, from that time on, writing fiction got less and less popular.
Even during her 8.5 years in the online marketing world, writing didn't progress much. So Nina decided to change course at the end of 2016. She wanted to take her passion for the written word seriously again. During her 2.5-month tour of Australia, she turned the principles of her romantic drama "The Other Side" into a whodunit. That eventually became Fatal Choices, published in 2019.
Thanks in part to a course at the Writers' Academy and her participation in National Novel Writing Month (50,000 words in 30 days), she found her joy in fiction writing again. She was so happy that she wanted to share this positive experience with as many stuck-up storytellers as possible, so that they too would see again how much satisfaction writing actually gives.
Since the beginning of 2019, Nina is therefore the proud owner of BackWords, the name under which she offers online writing courses. New (aspiring) writers join her BackWords community on Facebook every day. Also, more than 2,500 Dutch and Flemish people have already followed her free 7-day #WieSchrijftDieBlijft-challenge, in an attempt to get back on track with writing.
Nina has lived in Haarlem since 2011. In addition to being the owner of BackWords, she is a freelance online marketer. She also works as a proofreader at Hamley Books.
