Hendrik Hoitinga was born in Leeuwarden, Friesland, in the Netherlands and emigrated with his family to New Zealand when he was ten. After travelling extensively during his teens and twenties, he married Gillian in 1980 in Auckland. They have two children and moved to live in the UK in 1990. Hendrik worked in retail for 26 years. He and his wife were commissioned and ordained as officers of the Salvation Army in 1995. They have served in England, Belgium, Wales and Scotland. Hendrik has been able to focus on his writing since he retired in 2017. Now a grandfather and living in Wick in Scotland, he still loves travelling, music from the sixties and seventies and collects Dutch comic books. To date he has three books published, The Item, The Mosaic Swallow and Three Monks from Florence. A fourth, The Ontario Project, is due in April and he is currently working on his fifth novel.