Wil-Low Series: FAQ

Questions

Answers

Why did you create the Wil-Low Series?

TL;DR: I created the Wil-Low Series to remove two common barriers to reading: lack of time and a preference for non-fiction.

Long answer:

I started my career in software. I created the open-source PDF library iText. Together with my wife, I founded a company around that software and helped grow it from a startup into a scale-up with offices in Belgium, the United States, and Singapore. In December 2015, we sold three quarters of our shares. I left the company in September 2018 and sold my remaining shares in February 2020.

After leaving the company, I was looking for a new challenge. On the first day of 2019, I made one—and only one—New Year's resolution: I would win at least one writing contest. I wrote dozens of short stories, and by the end of the year I had already won three competitions.

Over time, I raised the bar and set increasingly ambitious goals. I wrote non-fiction books such as Nijlpaard voor Kerstmis (2020) in Dutch and Entreprenerd: Building a Multi-Million-Dollar Business with Open Source Software (2021) in English. I also published short stories in Dutch and Flemish anthologies (EdgeZero, Godijn Publishing, LetterRijn,...) and magazines (Fantastische Vertellingen, HSF, SF-Terra, In Tenebris, Weirdo's,...). All these stories are catalogued in my personal Short Story Management System. In 2025, the Flemish Publisher Poespa Producties released Onvoltooid toekomstige tijd, a selection of 42 of my short stories.

People often ask me what I do these days.
"I'm a writer now," I say. "I write fiction."

A surprisingly common response is: "I don't read books."
When I ask why, the most frequent answer is: "I don't have the time."

I find that reason difficult to accept. During my years as CEO, I was managing teams across three continents, yet I still made time to read every day. In my experience, having time to read is usually not the issue. Making time is. A good way to start, is to stop consuming AI-slop on social media...

Others tell me: "I read books, but only non-fiction. Fiction feels like a waste of time."
That response saddens me a little because some of the deepest truths about life, people, and history can be found in fiction.

Rather than arguing with either group, I decided to create a practical solution.

The Wil-Low Series consists of books that can be read in a single evening. The stories are approximately 100 pages long, which is about the number of pages I read on an average day while running my company. For readers who prefer non-fiction, every volume also includes around 40 pages of background material, often presented as richly illustrated endnotes.

In other words, the Wil-Low Series is designed for people who think they don't have time for books and for people who believe they only enjoy non-fiction.

How did you manage to produce that many titles in such a short time?

TL;DR: It may look as if these books appeared overnight, but many of them have been in development for years, sometimes decades. I've been writing stories and collecting ideas since childhood. Only recently have I started systematically expanding and publishing them.

Long answer:

I've wanted to be a writer for as long as I can remember.

At school, my favorite subjects were mathematics and Latin. When it came time to choose a university education, my parents believed engineering would offer better career prospects than writing. I eventually graduated as a civil architectural engineer, but I never stopped writing or pursuing creative projects.

In 1994, at the age of 24, I won my first literary prize with the story Icarus Falling. Like many young writers, I thought that success would be the beginning of a literary career.

It wasn't.

Most of the stories I wrote during those early years remained unpublished, unfinished, or simply failed to attract much attention. Like many aspiring authors, I needed a way to make a living, so I took a job as a software developer.

Writing moved to the background, but it never disappeared.

In my spare time, I created the open-source PDF library iText, which eventually led to my first publishing contract. I wrote two editions of iText in Action for Manning Publications, published in 2006 and 2010.

Later, together with my wife, I built a business around iText. Running and growing that company consumed most of my time and energy. Even so, I continued to collect ideas, conduct research, and write notes for stories I hoped to develop one day.

Many writers keep a drawer full of unfinished manuscripts. I kept an entire archive.

After leaving the company, I finally had the opportunity to return to writing seriously. In 2023, I created a personal Short Story Management System to track my publications, contest results, and literary awards.

While organizing that archive, I rediscovered dozens of forgotten ideas, unfinished stories, and story concepts dating back many years. What struck me was how many of those stories felt incomplete. Some were published as short stories, but they read like the opening chapter of a much larger narrative. Often that was not a deliberate artistic choice. I simply did not have the time to develop them further when I first wrote them.

In 2026, I decided to change that. Rather than starting from a blank page, I began revisiting stories, characters, historical settings, and research material that had often been waiting for years. Some projects had been in my notes for a decade. Others could be traced back even further. As a result, the publication dates may be recent, but the stories themselves are usually much older.

The Wil-Low Series is therefore not the product of a sudden burst of inspiration. It is the result of a lifetime of writing, collecting ideas, and gradually learning how to transform them into books. In that sense, I am not producing dozens of new stories in a few years. I am finally opening the drawer I've been filling since childhood.

Why did you choose Amazon KDP? Aren't you ashamed putting more money in Jeff Bezos' pocket?

TL;DR: If a literary agent can secure a publishing deal for the Wil-Low Series with a major international publisher, I would happily consider that route. Until then, Amazon KDP is the most effective way for me to make my books available to readers around the world.

Long answer:

When I started writing Entreprenerd, I spent a considerable amount of time trying to find a literary agent who could get me a traditional book contract with an imprint of one of the big five in publishing: Penguin Random House, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Hachette, or Simon & Schuster.

I quickly discovered that the English-language publishing industry works very differently from the software industry in which I had spent most of my career. The publishers I want to publish with do not accept unsolicited manuscripts from authors. Instead, they rely on literary agents to identify, evaluate, and submit projects on behalf of writers.

See for instance the FAQ at Random House:

Penguin Random House does not accept unsolicited submissions, proposals, manuscripts, illustrations, artwork, or submission queries at this time. This includes submission of work previously published elsewhere. We are also unable to provide draft support, translation or ghostwriters for aspiring authors.
If you would like to have your work or manuscript considered for publication by a major book publisher, we recommend that you work with an established literary agent. Each agency has manuscript submission guidelines.

This creates a challenge for authors. Before a publisher can evaluate your work, you often need an agent. Before an agent is willing to represent you, you usually need to convince them that your work is worth their time and effort.
I contacted numerous agents and researched many more. Some specialized in particular genres, audiences, or types of authors. Despite my efforts, I was unable to find an agent who was a good fit for my projects. It's as if I don't have the right cultural, ethnic and demographic profile the average agent is interested in.

If I were offered representation by an agent who believed in the Wil-Low Series and could successfully pitch it to a major publisher, I would be very interested in that conversation. A good agent can be invaluable. They understand the market, know editors personally, negotiate contracts, and help shape an author's career.

In the meantime, I faced a choice: continue waiting for a traditional publishing opportunity, or publish the books myself.

I chose the second option.

As a former entrepreneur, I am comfortable taking responsibility for the entire process. I write the books, create the covers, manage the website, handle the marketing, and interact directly with readers. Self-publishing allows me to control every aspect of the project and to release books on my own schedule.

Amazon KDP is not perfect. Like any large platform, it has strengths and weaknesses. However, it provides something that is difficult for an independent author to achieve elsewhere: global distribution. A reader in Belgium, the United States, Singapore, or anywhere else can purchase the same book through a familiar platform and receive it quickly.

That reach matters to me.
It's the kind of reach I had with my open-source software.

So, no, I am not ashamed of publishing through Amazon KDP. I see it as a practical solution rather than an ideological choice. If a better alternative presents itself, I am open to it. Until then, Amazon KDP allows me to do what matters most: put stories into the hands of readers.

Did you use ChatGPT, Claude, Grok, Gemini, or Copilot to generate the cover images?

TL;DR: No. I create the cover images using open-source software running locally on my own computer. My workflow is based on Stable Diffusion through the Automatic1111 WebUI and open-weight models that, to the best of my knowledge, do not infringe third-party copyrights.

Long answer:

Creating book covers is not entirely outside my comfort zone.

I attended an arts school for nine years, from age 9 to 18. Later, I studied civil architectural engineering at Ghent University. Over the years, I painted in oils, designed logos for most of the companies I founded, and spent more than twenty years working in the PDF industry. While I am not a professional graphic designer, I do have enough artistic and technical background to design my own covers.

My process begins with a concept sketch. Depending on the project, I create a rough design, a collage, or a visual composition using the GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP). This serves as the starting point for the cover image.

I then use that image as input for Stable Diffusion WebUI by Automatic1111, running locally on my computer. Because my laptop does not have an NVIDIA GPU, image generation is relatively slow and often takes several minutes per iteration. I usually experiment with multiple prompts, settings, and models before arriving at a result that matches the vision I have in mind. The process is highly iterative. I may combine generated elements, paint over parts of an image, adjust colors, recompose the layout, or switch to a different model entirely.

Once I have finalized the artwork for the front and back cover, I assemble the complete cover and generate the print-ready PDF using a custom application built on top of the community edition of iText.

So, no, I do not use ChatGPT, Claude, Grok, Gemini, or Copilot to create my cover images. My workflow is closer to digital craftsmanship than to entering a prompt and accepting the first result. I view it as a form of experimental art: a creative process that combines traditional design skills, open-source tools, and a considerable amount of trial and error until the image matches the story I want to tell.

Do you use AI during the writing process?

TL;DR Yes, but not to write my stories for me. I write my own fiction. I mainly use AI as a proofreading and quality-control tool to help me catch spelling mistakes, grammatical errors, inconsistencies, and plot problems.

Long answer:

Yes, I use AI during the writing process, but probably not in the way many people imagine.

My native language is Dutch. Although I have spent decades working internationally and am comfortable writing in English, I still make mistakes. Some of them are surprisingly persistent. Near-homophones, for instance, can trip me up. Even after multiple revisions, I might write faith when I mean fate, or overlook a subtle grammatical issue that a native speaker would immediately spot.

Because of that, I see AI as an assistant, not as an author.

The Belgian data scientist and professor Ann Doom once described responsible AI use through the lens of the blue team / red team concept from cybersecurity. I find that analogy useful.

People such as Petra De Sutter (Rector of Ghent University in Belgium), Rik Torfs (writer, former Rector of the Catholic University of Leuven, also in Belgium), Peter Vandermeersch (journalist, Editor in Chief,...) used AI as their blue team. They delegated writing copy to artificial intelligence. They put themselves in the red team: they merely edited the text generated by AI, assuming that they would be able to make the copy their own.

Petra De Sutter used a fake, AI-generated Albert Einstein quote (Dogma is the enemy of progress) in her opening academic speech. The quote was a hallucination created by artificial intelligence when she drafted her address, causing a significant public and internal controversy. Rik Torfs was caught using similar quotes in one of his books. Peter Vandermeersch was been suspended by Dutch Publisher Mediahuis for using AI-generated quotes in his writings.

In my writing process, I am the blue team. I create the stories, develop the characters, conduct the research, and write every chapter myself. The ideas, themes, plot twists, and end notes all originate from me. AI is part of my red team. Its role is to challenge my work and help me identify weaknesses.

That process often starts with simple tools. Microsoft Word highlights typos, spelling mistakes, and grammatical issues. Beyond that, I sometimes use Copilot to look for inconsistencies, logical gaps, and continuity errors. For example, it may notice that a character appears to age ten years during a period that only spans five years, or that a scene contradicts information established earlier in the story. Those are exactly the kinds of mistakes authors can become blind to after reading the same manuscript dozens of times.

Of course, AI is not infallible. Neither is human proofreading. For my book Entreprenerd (2021), I hired a professional proofreader, yet a few minor errors still slipped through. The same goes for the books I wrote for Manning Publications in 2006 and 2009. No review process, whether human or artificial, catches everything. That is why I view AI as one tool among many. It does not replace my research. It does not replace editorial judgment. And it certainly does not replace creativity.

Readers pick up a Wil-Low book because they want to read my stories, my characters, and my perspective on history, science, and human nature. AI cannot provide that. What it can do is help me present those stories with fewer errors and greater consistency. So, yes, I use AI, mostly Copilot. Not to write stories in my place, but to help ensure that the stories I write are the best versions of themselves.

Why do you write a screenplay version of your stories before writing the novel?

TL;DR: I find it easier to write long fiction when I can rely on a predefined structure. I also tend to visualize stories before I write them down. Because screenplays follow a well-defined structure and are inherently visual, writing the film before writing the novel works best for me.

Long answer:

I am perfectly capable of writing non-fiction books. Over the years, I wrote two technical books of more than 500 pages for Manning Publications and a 400-page autobiography. Yet whenever I tried to write book-length fiction, I failed.

Writing a short story is like running a sprint. I can often write one in just a few hours. Most of my ideas arrive during walks with my dog. Writing a novel, however, is like running a marathon, and for some reason I only seemed to have the stamina for non-fiction marathons.

That was frustrating because readers of Onvoltooid toekomstige tijd (a selection of 42 stories published by Poespa Producties) often told me that some stories were too short. They wanted to read longer versions of stories such as Codebrekers and Ogen zo blauw. At the same time, many readers remarked that these stories would make excellent films.

When one of my stories, Precies zoals hij het wenste, was adapted into a short film, I began to wonder whether I should try writing screenplays myself.

In 2025, I started working on Emperor of America. It took me some time to learn the craft. I submitted the screenplay to the BlueCat Screenplay Competition, and the reader pointed out dozens of mistakes. That feedback proved invaluable. It helped me write a second screenplay, The Sisters Lovecraft, which went on to receive two honorary mentions. A third and fourth screenplay followed: Operation Downfall and Eyes So Bleu.

Gradually, I discovered the real nature of my problem.

Whenever I wrote non-fiction, I always started with a structure. Manning Publications would not allow authors to write a single paragraph before finalizing the book's table of contents. Likewise, when I wrote my autobiography, I knew exactly how the story would evolve before writing the first chapter.

With short stories, structure had never been much of a concern. At one point, I specialized in flash fiction, writing stories ranging from 250 to 1,250 words. The structure of a story that short is fundamentally different from that of a novel.

Screenplays gave me the structure I had been missing:

In the past, I often found myself wandering down side paths, writing pages that led nowhere. I would get lost in my own manuscript. Screenwriting taught me discipline. Every scene must serve a purpose. Every scene must move the story forward. Every scene must support the theme.

That is relatively easy in a short story. Over the course of a novel, it becomes much harder.

As I gained experience, I noticed that the screenplays Operation Downfall and Eyes So Blue were considerably richer than the short stories from which they originated, Codebrekers and Ogen zo blauw. That was when I realized that the screenplay should not be the end product. It should be the intermediate step.

The idea for the Wil-Low Series was born from that realization. I would first write the screenplay, then adapt it into a novel, starting with Codebrekers/Operation Downfall.

There is one more reason this approach works for me: I naturally think in images. Before I write a story, I see it unfold in my mind. That process works perfectly for short stories and screenplays because both are highly visual. For novels, I used to struggle to translate those mental images into a coherent long-form narrative. By writing the screenplay first, I create a visual blueprint that makes the subsequent novel much easier to write.

In short, the screenplay is no longer just a different version of the story. It is the bridge between the story I imagine and the novel I ultimately want to write.

When you refer to the screenplay, you mention a status. What are those about?

TL;DR: The status indicates where a screenplay is in my writing process. These are my own working labels, designed to help me track the development of a story from the initial idea to a version that is ready for novelization.

Long answer:

When I mention the status of a screenplay, I am referring to the stage it has reached in my personal writing process. These stages are inspired by standard screenwriting practices, but the terminology and definitions reflect the way I work.

Professional screenwriting typically continues with additional stages, such as:

At the moment, I do not use those statuses because they only become relevant once a screenplay enters actual film production.

Perhaps one day a producer will become interested in one of my stories. If that happens, I will happily expand this list. Until then, the Reader Version represents the final stage of my writing process and the starting point for the novelization.

Series

  1. Operation Downfall
  2. The Sisters Lovecraft
  3. Emperor of America
  4. Mirror Point
  5. Eyes So Blue

Entreprenerd


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