Behind the Scenes of Dutched Up!

Dutched Up!: Rocking the Clogs Expat Style is the first published book I have been a part of, but I have of course read other expat anthologies (Tales from the Expat Harem: Foreign Women in Modern Turkey (Seal Women's Travel) being one of the most memorable). What I had never thought about whilst reading these anthologies was how they came to be. Until I was involved in contributing to such a book. And then I got to thinking about what happened behind the scenes when these women came together to tell their stories. Were they written in isolation? Did they remain strangers? Or did the book create a group of women who were bound by what they had written? Did they stay in touch during the years following the book's publication?

In any case, I do know a little of what happened behind the scenes when 27 expat women bloggers in the Netherlands came together to write a book. And that's the basis of my latest article for expatsHaarlem:

"In April 2013, I received an email from a stranger. The gist of the message was whether I wanted to be part of a book about expat life in the Netherlands. I, of course, said yes.

That stranger turned out to be Olga Mecking, who you may also know as The European Mama – and she was – in all seriousness, together with Lynn Morrison (aka The Nomad Mom Diary and also the brainchild behind the project), putting an expat anthology together. 

What did I want to write about? they asked. Marriage, babies and friendship, as it turned out. And coincidentally, those three themes have run through the creation of this book over the last eighteen months."

You can read the rest over at expatsHaarlem.