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Why write a book? Especially a book about the trials and tribulation of two 'foreigners' (Dutch) starting a retail business in Kent UK?

It started with a request to write an article for Greenwich Enterprise Board about the positive influence their E-commerce training had had on our business (the training has been great and I can and will recommend it to anyone). 

Thinking about that effect I realized the following:
a) 500 - 1000 words were never going to be enough for me (coming from a family 'bitten' by the writers-bug)
b) there had been many other individuals, mentors, businesses, organisations and even trainings that had been and still are of even more importance to our company. 

That's what 'started me off' and in the end I ended up with a 168 page paperback debut novel. And was in fact also the start of the business pondering blog with the same name

That's right, a business novel. Not a technical business book. Part is 'fiction', part is non-fiction and fact-based.
In my novel I cover the positive, practical, hands-on, sound and mostly freely given advice and help we received from individuals, companies, etc to build our own company after we were made redundant in 2003.

Or, as the back cover of the novel will tell you:

 

In �The KISS-business� Karin Hermans has compressed (part memoirs, part fiction) the journey of starting and growing a business in Kent UK, with all its ups and downs, into the four (hectic) months leading to the opening of their brand new showroom in the lovely village of Charing Kent (Aug 2005).
During the trials and tribulation of setting-up business in the UK (as �foreigners�) the Dutch couple feel they have been very lucky to meet various advisers/mentors who were (and are) always very willing and able to help them on the journey to establish and grow Wood You Like Ltd. 

".......And is it not the journey, the search for that elusive goal, that provides us with the adrenalin and energy to keep us driving forward. And why? Sometimes it is the need to develop an immediate income, underpinned perhaps by the suggestion of a capital contribution to our retirement on the disposal of business. 
But more often it is the challenge, the fun and delight of achievement, that keeps us going, �fun� being the essential word because, without the fun, how else could we survive those long hours in our respective businesses......."
Richard Calderwood FCA (extract from foreword in "The Kiss Business")

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