Welcome to my website!

 

I did my first bit of online writing online in 1997. I have had a few characters during my ongoing stint as a role-player, but since 2001 I've focused my effort on the one portrayed here.  As you might imagine, it's easy to have collected an abundance of information about a character during such a period, and that information was scattered across websites and profiles for much of it. Just a month before I created this site, I had created still another site to move information from a disintegrating service to a more stable one. (Important piece of perspective: Until 2017 I was an AOL lifer, so I've seen my share of profiles and websites change – and even disappear – without much advance notice.)

 

This site represents my first (and hopefully final) effort to unify all of that information in one place. It took so long because most web hosts place restrictions on free sites, so props to Wix for helping to overcome the hobgoblin that is the "ten pages for free" limit. In the past, I've maintaned "character" sites that also had "writer" information and "writer" sites that also had "character" information. On this site, I'm doing what I can to categorize the information so that you'll know when I'm talking about Pieter (or speaking through him) and when I'm talking about (or speaking for) myself. Still – as I observe elsewhere – we write best when we know "enough" about a character, the writer, how the writer views the character, and how the writer views writing. There will be places where traditionally "in-character" information and traditionally "out-of-character" information mix. This is usually by design.

 

To give you some idea of what you'll find by perusing the site, here's a run-down of what I've collected under each menu item. (For reference, each menu header is also a summary page of sorts.)

 

• Introductions
  Get to know Pieter van Rhyn the same way thousands of others first did – old profiles! (For better or worse, this represents my reluctance to part with a single piece of character information in its "saddest" form.)

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• The "Soul" of a Character
  In-depth character information:  vital statistics and dossier, stories, explanations.

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• The Mind of a "Writer"
  Out-of-character information: frequently asked questions, roleplay and writing perspectives, editorials.

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• Playing your Part
  Character sketches of the supernatural variety. If writing with me seems like something you'd like to do but you don't think you have the "right" character for doing so, you might try one of them out for size.

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• Photo Gallery
  They're pictures. Big surprise there, right? However, I've also added some stories that are attached to a few of the pictures and were too good to just throw away. (There's that same reluctance again.)

 

I hope you enjoy your visit. More importantly, I hope it validates any inclination you already might have formed for writing with me. I welcome your constructive questions and comments!

 

This site is best viewed using Google Chrome!

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