Latest news & blog

Updated: July 21st, 2008

After a lot of months of some interesting and rather painful medical problems (jaw infection plus complications), I have returned to writing full time. I'm glad to be working on a number of stories at the moment. I am finishing the Deliberate screenplay and spent some time writing a proze version of the story to get to some basic details. Deliberate is a very complex thriller that I wanted to simplify ever since I finished the first draft in 2006 but never had a good idea on how to work it out. Right now, I've got the outline finished, and have compiled the script from the scenes I wrote over the past few years. All that is left to do now is to polish the scenes and dialogue and it will be finished once again. I may enter it into contests, or simply use InkTip and see if anyone is interested.

A bigger story I am working on is the 1600 Dutch television series for which I've finished the first drafts of the first five episodes. I will now work on the remaining five to seven episodes before I return polishing and grooming the first five. As I mentioned earlier, it is a very large and complex project, but I am enjoying every minute of it. It's a giant puzzle, and I love my puzzles.

Currently watching: Criminal Minds, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel.

Currently listening: Scar Symmetry

Great news! One of the short scripts that I wrote called FIGMENT was picked up by Director Jay Lee and turned into a movie not so long ago. You can find out more about this on MySpace.

Here is a message from Jay about this production:

"The script "Figment",written by Yvette Boertje, was chosen by Roughneck Pictures and director Jay Lee to be made for the 7 Deadly Films Festival to be held on October 26th at Alice Cooperstown, Alice Cooper's restaurant in beautiful downtown Phoenix, Arizona. This invitation only event brings 7 deadly films together for a special evening of horror and suspense.

An additional pre-screening of the films will be held at the Phoenix Horror and Sci-Fi festival on Oct. 20th.

Made by top Phoenix indie filmmakers, these original films have to comply with the simple rules of the festival, they have to be 20 minutes or less in length, and someone has to die.Figment tells the story of how a brutal murder drives a woman to the edge of madness, where the lines between reality and fantasy become blurred. A love story with a ghostly twist, this film shows that true love can have deadly consequences. It stars two local favorite actors, Kimber Leigh and Aaron Burckle in the key roles of Eva and Robert, giving both actors a chance to dig in to an emotionally challenging script. "Figment was a perfect story for this festival" comments director Jay Lee, "It adds another dimension to the festival by offering a true psychological thriller for the audience in addition to the more traditional horror films that will also be shown. I was originally drawn to the story synopsis and once I contacted Yvette and had a chance to read the script, I knew this was the one. It's smart, eerie, and unique, plus it had some excellent murders." Figment has completed production and is in the final post stage in preparation for the festival."

Just returned from seeing The Bourne Ultimatum, which is one of the better movies of the recent decades. Though I don't write this kind of action movie (maybe one day ;-D) this is the type of story I absolutely love. This third installment of the Bourne trilogy was everything I hoped it would be and more. Absolutely a must-see, if you are in to conspiracy/spy type thrillers.

In other news: Since I've been cutting back on the work I do for Arjen Lucassen I've been real busy trying to outline 1600, the Dutch historical epic TV series. The story currently appears to run 12 episodes and not 10 as I originally planned. We will see how the outlining continues as I am now dove-tailing information from a history novel written by American writer John Motley into the original model I wrote a year ago. It is a hellish job, because it requires a lot of copy pasting, but I manage now I have much more available and uninterupted time. In order to further streamline the individual episodes, I've started making lists of essences (I'm a real 'list' person) to get a better grip on what each story is about. I have added to this site episode titles.

The polishing of VOLATILE and DELIBERATE is coming along nicely and I've also have embarked on the final phase with outlining 1600, the Dutch historical epic TV series I've been sinking my teeth in. I'm quite excited about that because there is a lot of information that I have to distil into an understandable and entertaining story. I'll be quiting my work for the recording industry, and concentrate a lot more on my writing very soon.

I've been hard at work with Arjen Lucassen who is recording the latest Ayreon album. Vocalists are coming to the studio in a steady stream from all over the world. And though we seem to have hit a bit of a snag with one of the vocalists, everything should work out just fine in the end. Nothing like a little conflict to get the adrenaline pumping!

THE FAIR ended up in the Quarter Finals of the International Page Awards contest under the alternate name 'The Templars and the Fair'. According to the contest that is the top 25 % of their contestants. I have decided however to refrain from entering more contests, it seems to be more of a lottery deal, and I don't want to waste my time there.

I'm nearly done with the screenplays for VOLATILE, a re-edit of DELIBERATE and REAP. New ideas are coming too, but first I want to finish the existing stories I've already listed on the site. I'll get around to the new ideas after I polished these three so that they shine! ;-)

My MySpace site has been getting steady traffic. I've been adding friends now for some time, but I haven't yet spent time really looking for friends to add myself. I'm sure that I will get around to it once this website is completely finished. The layout of MySpace is still the old one of this site, and I will also get around to fixing it soon.