About Me...
As soon as she learned how to put words on paper, Mel Hartman immediately started to scribble down everything, which led to her writing a large number of journals. When she was approximately 10 years old, she started writing plays. Children's books, romantic novels and poems followed, but during puberty, it became clear the genres she loved most were fiction: horror, thrillers, SF and fantasy.
In 1996 she participated in a programme, "the grant of the unpublished book" in Leuven, Belgium. She wrote stories for 3 books: SF, fantasy and a series of short thriller stories. There she met the editor of the SF and fantasy magazine "Cerberus", also called "Flanders Fantastic" (now an on-line magazine), and he asked her to write for his magazine. She mostly did articles about paranormal science, but she also wrote some short stories.
After moving to the Netherlands, she stopped writing for that magazine, but soon got a new offer to write a column for a local newspaper about her experiences as a Belgian woman living in the Netherlands. Later, when she moved to Ostend, Belgium, she had to give this up.
Early one morning in 2003, she woke up with the idea for "Fantasy Hunters". She jumped right out of bed and wrote for the entire morning. She was dragged into the world she created and felt more like a typist than a writer, since the story seemed to write itself.
Dreams and sleep have fascinated Mel since childhood. Ever since she was very young, she has written down her dreams and nightmares, and analysed them. During her psychology studies, her essays were always about dreams. As an intern she learned everything about sleep and dreams in the centre for sleep- and waking-disorders in Antwerp, Belgium. Immediately after her studies, she stayed working in that sleep centre and discovered the scientific side of sleep as a sleep analyst (diagnosis and treatment) and scientific researcher. Later, she got an offer to work in the sleep centre in The Hague, The Netherlands. Scientific articles in "Sleep Medicine" where published under her name: Melissa Vandeputte. Of course, that scientific part is also present in her books about the Fantasy Hunters, as well as her fascination for psychology, the paranormal, ufology and myths from several cultures.
At the moment, she is writing part four of the Fantasy Hunters: "Dream Image". She also writes a column for Ezzulia.nl, is busy with the scenario for the comic book version of the Fantasy Hunters, writes short stories for the publisher, Parelz, and has started writing a new series that is a mix of chick lit, detective and fantasy. Film rights to the first book have been acquired by director Pedro Chaves (www.dreamjourneystudios.com and on IMDB), who will turn it into an English-language film to be released in 2012. Together with the author, he is now busy writing the screenplay. Mel Hartman was born in 1972 in Ostend, Belgium, where she still lives with her husband and dog, Kiwi, in a little farmhouse. She prefers to spend her spare time playing the piano, painting, doing ju-jitsu, reading, watching films, travelling and walking with Kiwi.
