Ardor house, de uitgeverij van Jos Weijmer en Richard de Vroede, heeft me gevraagd mijn verhalenbundel Saga Santorian, uit te mogen geven in het Engels. Ik ben natuurlijk zeer vereerd en heb meteen een wervende tekst geschreven...Brad Winning is the nickname of the Dutch fantasy author Alex de Jong (1967), who has won two major (Dutch) fantasy awards for his stories so far. One being the Unleash Award for best fantasy short story (2006), the other being the Elf Fantasy Award, for the year’s best fantasy novel (2003). Brad/Alex was the first Dutch author to win this award (the prior two awards were won by Robin Hobb and Terry Goodkind, so Alex is in good company). What made it even more remarkable was that his book The council of seven was his first novel and that is was published by his private publishing firm Attest Fantasy. The book sold exceedingly well for a fantasy debut in The Netherlands. Brad/Alex had little time to write since then, mainly because he started the quarterly ‘magazine’ Pure Fantasy, in the tradition of Weird Tales, publishing short stories, written by other talented writers (since 2004). The soul idea is to present Dutch and Belgian authors to a big public. Pure Fantasy was praised by Black gate, one of the leading American fantasy magazines. Brad is nowadays working on a few novels which should be released ‘when the time is right’, being: Traces of blood (about a female adventurer), Family honour (a fantasy-detective), The outcasts (mercenaries bond together by a mages spell), Lost souls (fallen angel; contemporary fantasy-horror) and several short stories about his Conan the barbarian-typed character Sirkhan, a tribute to Robert E. Howard’s sword and sorcery.
