Eric Rietveld

Born in Rotterdam in the time that the word winter still meant something. Snowmen, snowball fights, obligatory gloves, mandatory scarves (“or you won’t go outside at all,”) sore fingers coming back in and that fuzzy feeling when the christmas lights were switched on.

Growing up in the same city, discovering music, hobbies, girls and politics (not necessarily in that order). Started to paint and write poetry at the mixed up age of 16. Wrote a long story in Dutch that kept growing and changing over the following 30 years or so.

After experimenting with (not so much in Holland -) illegal substances and left wing living (playing in punk bands, being vegan, being against nearly anything, squatting) working in education and IT.

Moved to Scotland just after the current millennium commenced and returned to my roots. The roots of the crop my father planted. Conservation of the natural world, what lives in it, where it lives and its relationships (the holistic view). With the rediscovery of these roots came the creativity that was also suppressed by not being oneself.

Hence the novel Tripped.

More about that later.