Hello dearest Michelle,

I have always wanted to say thank you and share with you my deepest appreciation for the Torak & Wolf series (at least that’s what they’re called in the Dutch version 🙂 Torak & Wolf – Adventures in a magical past). I never thought about simply googling a way to do this, but now the time is finally here.

First crossing paths with the books when I was a little 7 year old, I’d never experienced anything like it. Starting from page one, I could see the world form around me, I could dream about it, it felt like I knew the world like I knew the woods in the village I grew up in. I could open the books and the real world would come to a halt.

I must have read the whole series back to back three times back then, carrying the books wherever I went.
I could lose myself in these stories, in your storytelling and world building, I felt like I was never more than a meter away from Torak whilst reading.

Forward to now, 25 years old, I just finished the second book again. … …

And it’s still the same. I am still there with them, feeling with them, mimicking facial expressions you describe, truly FEELING the story to the deepest of my being. I am 25, but I am 7-12 again. I am there again, in the woods. I can escape the world again.

After I “stopped” reading during puberty/adolescence due to shifting interests, the stories, certain words, names or places; they stuck. The way wolf describes the snow or the ocean: it stuck. Everything stuck. For 18 years and counting.
Your stories have been with me my entire life.

From the deepest of my heart, the most sincere “Thank you”, for creating these stories and this world.
Thank you, for giving me an escape when I need(ed) it -be it in the book or in my mind-.

Thank you. For allowing me to feel something só comforting, which I can’t even properly describe with the amount of words I used here.

Thank you, and I wish you all the best! 🙂

Dear Mattijs, I read your message after returning from a walk in the woods where I live – and what a vivid picture you evoke of your seven-year-old self encountering Torak en Wolf for the first time!  It’s brilliant that your twenty-five-year-old self has now plunged back into Torak’s world, and I’m so glad that you took the time to write and tell me.  I don’t know whether you’re aware that a few years ago I wrote three further books in the series – Viper’s Daughter, Skin Taker and Wolf Bane?  I’m afraid they haven’t been translated into Dutch, but you’re clearly up to reading them in English, should you wish to.  In the meantime, thank you so much for getting in touch, and for conveying so eloquently what the stories have meant to you.  I hope you have fun re-visiting the Forest with Torak, Renn and Wolf – and may the guardian run with you!  With very best wishes, Michelle