After the UFO Crash: An Interview With Author Koos Verkaik

It all happens in the never-dull-Sixties; a brilliant rocket engineer commits suicide, hurricanes harass big parts of the USA, a UFO crashes, a community of hippies goes totally insane, odd Swiss psychiatrists experiment with electroshocks, people begin to act strange (and many of them turn out to be a genius) there are murderers who are so clever that they become a danger for the USA, the army is ready to destroy an entire town…

Koos Verkaik, has everyone gone raving mad in your new novel HIM, After the UFO Crash?

Well, yes… This is a book about total panic and chaos. A reviewer wrote about it: Him: After the UFO Crash by Koos Verkaik is a book you’ll read and then you’ll wonder did you really read what you did. Before beginning, though you must be sure to have your seat-belt on nice and tight, then hold on because you’re about to go on one twist and turned ride of your life. Once you open the first page, it will grab and hold you tightly until you finish reading the last page. Then when you think you have just read a fantastic part, up comes another one, then there is more and more. You will be kept on the edge of your seat as you read all the action, thrills and suspense that is on each and every page. The writing is amazing. After reading Him you may (as I did), wonder can this someday be in our future. This book is a must-read for all. I gave it 5 stars but wished I could give it more because it deserves more. Koos Verkaik hit it out of the ballpark with this book.

On the back cover of your new book, we read: Dutch phenomenon Koos Verkaik has written more than 60 books. Master of creating sensational works full of magic, horror, mystery and adventure, this terrific author called the Dutch Stephen King (European Penthouse Magazine), now writes for Righter s Mill Press with this astounding novel HIM: After the UFO Crash. His magnificent book Dance of The Jester will be coming soon.

It must be true that you are one of the hardest working authors…

I have always worked hard, making book after book, story after story. I write in Dutch and then translate my texts into English. And of course, I have to read a lot, do intensive research. Especially for this book.

You mention synchronicity in your new novel. Meaningful coincidences – two things that apparently have no connection, lead into a certain direction. Isn’t that idea developed by analytical psychiatrist Carl Jung? That goes deep…

Yes. One of the leading characters in the book, Jasper Froch, an American hippie, travels to Europe and his way is led by synchronicity. I read many books by Freud and Jung. I was about 18 when I started working as a copywriter for a big agency and there older colleagues pointed out the most interesting books I should read about psychology. And it is also a meaningful coincidence that Jung had an odd opinion about UFO’s!

As a boy, I also started collecting science fiction paperbacks. All those great writers! Isaac Asimov, Jack Vance, Theodore Sturgeon, Philip Dick, Robert Heinlein, Roger Zelazny…Plus everything that had to do with space travel. And UFOs… Piles of books! I am a book collector and always know exactly where I can find useful information in my personal library. And all this knowledge come together here in my novel HIM!

Can you tell in short what happens in HIM, After the UFO Crash?

The race for the moon. Arthur Croft, a great rocket engineer, sent a special capsule into space, hoping that it will be intercepted by extraterrestrial creatures. Then he commits suicide! Arthur Croft and many others who deal with space travel strongly believe that UFO’s are a reality. Jasper Froch, an American hippie, learns how to control the phenomenon of synchronicity and finds out that all kinds of coincidences lead him into a certain direction. A Swiss psychiatrist, asks Jasper to make friends with a special patient: a rich American by the name of Francis Lockhart.

Sanguine, Florida. A UFO crash there. Sanguine changes: people act strange, and many of them turn out to be a genius! Murderers seem to be unstoppable and highly gifted… The army is ready to destroy Sanguine, but then Jasper finds out about the influence of the UFO, about Arthur Croft and his own role in a very dangerous game…

Can you select an interesting passage from the novel?

Jasper picked up the book and waved it in the air. “This is something special,” he said. “I had stolen a book by Edgar Allan Poe. The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket. It’s his one and only novel, and he wrote it in 1838. It ends abruptly, leaving you eager to know more. I never keep something for long. Like you always have a corkscrew in your pocket; all I take along is a Hitachi transistor radio that fits easily in my inside pocket. I stole the book from a shop in Madrid. Then, last week, I was combing the bookstalls along the banks of the Seine and decided to put Poe’s book imperceptibly among the other books. Randomly, I picked up the book next to it. Here it is. A biography. Jules Verne: sa vie, son oeuvre, written by his cousin Marguerite Allotte de la Fuÿe. I took it with me, opened it randomly and read to my surprise about Verne’s great admiration for Poe and that he dearly regretted that the story of Gordon Pym was never continued. And . . . Jules Verne himself actually wrote a sequel!”

Antoine snapped his fingers.“Now I begin to understand! Do you have any idea how great you are?” “What do you mean by that? That I taught myself to read French? Or that I managed to steal Verne’s book unnoticed as well?” The vagrant sat there staring at him. “I have to ask you a question. Please, give me an honest answer.”

“All right, I promise.”First Antoine took another swig. “Do you remember what you said when I lost balance on the stairs and you caught me?” “I have no idea.” “You said, ‘You can’t fly like a kestrel, can you?’  Can it be that you had just then seen a kestrel?”

“No—no.”Antoine seemed nervous. He bent forward and leaned his elbows on his knees and rubbed his forehead with his fingertips. “I’m convinced that we didn’t meet by pure accident, Jasper Froch. It had to be this way. This is a magical moment.” “I don’t believe in magic,” smiled Jasper. The vagabond spread his arms and gave Jasper an almost indignant look. “Me neither! I am someone who believes in figures and patterns. More often than not, I have told my students about the intruder, the conjurer and the magician, each standing in front of a door and wanting to go inside. The intruder uses a false key, or[A3] like I saw you do, a little piece of iron wire. The conjurer has prepared the lock beforehand so that he can open it with an invisible trick. The magician is doomed to stay outside, for you cannot open a lock by willpower alone. It was a good way to catch the attention of my students[A4] then I would tell them about the power of exact sciences. And by the way, Jasper, I don’t believe in coincidence either. So when I tell you now that it actually was coincidence that brought you and me together, you must see that in a different light. I suspect—no, I know for sure that you—even though only in a very small way—are able to influence your own life.”

“Now you’ve made me curious. Go on. . . . What has that to do with a kestrel? The idea crossed my mind, that’s all. I might as well have mentioned a seagull or one of those countless pigeons you see flying around there.”

“That’s what you think, but it isn’t true. My head is spinning. I know that I’m drunk right now, but I have marshaled the facts and analyzed them. Statistically, what I have noticed during the short period of observing, you cannot be due to a coincidence. Impossible! One more time, this is a magical moment: I’m sitting here opposite a unique person! Let me begin with the bird. The moment I started to fall backward and tried to restore my balance, I looked up at the sky. I was totally confused, but still I was able to see a bird flying overhead. It was unmistakably a kestrel. I am certainly not an ornithologist, but I recognized the little bird of prey immediately. And then you made that remark.”

“A thing like that can happen. . . . It’s nothing to write home about.” “I might agree with you, if this was a solitary case.” Antoine raised the wine bottle that he had by now almost emptied. “I picked this bottle when I asked you about your future plans. You immediately mentioned the Rhine River. This is Rhine wine.” He took the last swig and rolled the bottle between ten fingers. “This is just as special—or improbable, if you wish—as mentioning a kestrel the moment one flies over.”

“Is that so? I wouldn’t know.”Antoine held the bottle up in the air and exclaimed, “But Jasper! Don’t you understand? This is Paris; this is France! This is a bistro in Montmartre! How big is the chance, statistically, that I would pick a German wine from the cellar of a French bistro?”

He gestured at the hundreds of bottles lining the wall.“Stand up; pick a bottle and see if it contains German wine. Do it one more time; do it ten times in a row; do it twenty times. . . . I bet all you’ll read are French labels. Combine that fact with your remark about the Rhine, and you’ll realize how special this incident really is. And then there is that incident with the kestrel—but there’s still more. A moment ago you said, ‘Or wherever the storm pushes me,’ remember? At that same moment, the rain suddenly blew against the windows with a lot of noise. You might as well have said, ‘Wherever the wind pushes me,’ but instead you chose storm. Three special cases. And then there’s your story about an Edgar Allan Poe novel and Jules Verne’s biography. You were thinking of the unfinished story, placed Poe’s book amongst a number of other books and picked up the book next to it.

“You opened it at random, and right on that page you read about Verne’s admiration for Poe and about how Verne completed Poe’s story. Digging up a German wine between hundreds of French bottles, finding an answer to your question in a book among many thousands of books in the stalls on the banks of the Seine.”

HIM is published by Righter’s Mill Press in Princeton. How did you end up there – led by synchronicity?

Haha! Mr. Al Longden is a big one in the publishing business and he has been my literary agent. He started Righter’s Mill Press with some important people; Jeffrey Batoff, Karen Venable and Richard Sand. The four of them know the business through and through and they are interested in making novels into movies! So they also set up a special company for film, also in Princeton: Three Corners Entertainment. They contacted me for books and film, for more than ten different titles. So one day, HIM, After the UFO Crash will become a film; they are already talking with producers.

So, HIM goes sky high… And then, later this year, that other book, Dance of The Jester, also by Righter’s Mill Press and Three Corners Entertainment.

That book is very special and dear to me. A second Renaissance, our world reigned by tycoons who crowned themselves to kings and queens…

Every now and then one calls you Koos ‘Jester’ Verkaik…

Right. I can be cynical like a jester and always can see things from both sides, I can be rather odd at times… And I made a study about jesters and wrote about them in different novels and even children’s books: All-Father, Wolf Tears, The Jester of Nottingham… and I like to introduce special characters that are very much like jesters.

Koos Verkaik, lots of success with HIM, After the UFO Crash, Dance of The Jester and all your other books!

Koos Verkaik website

Find his books on Amazon

HIM, After the UFO Crash for film

Dance of the Jester for film