My full name is Janette van de Geest Van Gruisen (it’s pronounced Yanette).                       I shorten it for everyone’s sake ….

I’m a writer and I love to travel. Does that make me a travel writer? Well, sometimes it does, but most of the time I live and work and write here at home in Newport, Rhode Island, on the beautiful coast of New England. In case you’re wondering, the photograph at the top of this page was taken on a treasured beach on the mainland, not far from home, in an early morning snowstorm on a wild wintry day in 2011.

I write about travel and traveling, but I write about other things too, in many forms and shapes and styles. I write for love and I write for money, and often I’m lucky to be able to combine the two in the same sentence. But even when I’m writing for money and not entirely for love, I never write without respect for my work. Writing is a powerful and personal process. It’s like gardening inside your soul. If you’re a writer, you have to tend to your own growth and work your own land. You have to feed, and weed, and fertilize, and compost, and you can’t hand over the job to anyone else or you’ll lose sight of why you began to write in the first place, and then you may as well blow a kiss goodbye to the fruits of your labor, or even your entire harvest. You have to love it … or leave it.  I love it.

In the pages of this website are samples of my writing. There are samples of what I have written for money – for an honest dollar – and samples of what I write for love alone. This is not about creating duality but about showing the many different kinds of work that can engage one writer. If you prefer to cut to the chase, please go to my Portfolio to see clips of my publications and get a sense of how my work might fit into your world. If you’re searching for professional Editing services I hope you’ll find some helpful information, and I look forward to receiving your inquiry. If you have a little time to spare, please browse An Ongoing Narrative to see if any of the ideas expressed in its pages spark your interest. If you have a comment or a question, I’ll welcome a word from you, and you can use either the reply bubble beside each post or the form on the Contact page for that purpose.

Thank you for visiting. I hope you’ll stay awhile.