Week 724

What’s this? I’m blogging about my work on a weekly basis – a simple way to track and archive whatever it is I spend my time on.

Last week was crammed between my return from the Ardennes on Monday and my family’s trip to the parents-in-law on Thursday, where we spent a long weekend celebrating Sinterklaas: I wrote a gazillion poems and got a wonderful gift in return.

On Tuesday I visited my publishing house Atlas Contact, to chat with Martine van As (marketing) and Vincent Merjenberg (PR), as well as Jeroen van der Heijden, the games expert at usability bureau Valsplat.

Our master plan is slowly taking shape: we’re planning a ‘read test’ of my upcoming novel De verdwijners in January. Just like with a test screening of a movie, or a play test of a game, we’ll gather data to improve the book. This means we’re going to be looking for test readers: if you’re interested, you can already get in touch.

I also spent time on the novel itself, of course. The deadline has been postponed a bit, though the overall schedule has only gotten tighter. I’m currently delivering the second draft in portions to my editor, after which we’ll have the test readers do their thing. Everything has to come together before the end of January and the book should be out in April.

On Wednesday morning, I visited Two Tribes, where we discussed some of the feedback they got regarding Toki Tori 2, the upcoming puzzle platform game I’m helping them out on. We discussed a new opening for the game, to put the player’s actions into context a bit more.

That afternoon, I went to BNR Nieuwsradio to talk about Wii U in BNR Digitaal: as it came out on Friday, this was Wii U week! The show can be downloaded as an MP3: my segment starts at around the 13:00 mark.

Also on Wednesday, I wrote most of my articles about Wii U for NRC Handelsblad and nrc.next.

The piece that appeared in NRC on Thursday was a first impression meant as an appendix to Arjan Terpstra’s longer report, which included an interview with Nintendo’s Shigeru Miyamoto.

The piece that appeared in nrc.next on Friday’s Tech spread was a longer background story, characterizing Nintendo as a toy company (not in a bad way), together with three short reviews. I published it here: Leuk, leuker, allerleukst: Wii U en de tragiek van een speelgoedbedrijf.

The Tech spread also included an column I wrote about Toca Boca. I published it here: Goed digitaal speelgoed uit Zweden voor de mini’s.

Finally on Wednesday night, I joined the Gamebites podcast on Wii U, with Erwin Vogelaar and Harry Hol.