Looking back through the years, it’s somehow obvious I find myself here, an author of fantasy books. But then again, who on earth decides to write a book out of the blue, just to tick a ‘done it’ box? I thought I’d share a few of the checkpoints I passed along this journey.
I was born in 1977, and grew up a child of the Eighties. During the early years, and specifically those counted in single digits, I spent my time alternating between playing at home – Lego, GI Joe and He-man – and the outside world – climbing trees, biking, boy scouts, chess, catching frogs, soccer, and demolishing stuff that seemed not to belong to anyone. We got that last part wrong on occasion, but considered it an acceptable risk.
I devoted the early hours of each weekend to cartoons on the Fun Factory, broadcasted on Sky channel – learning English by accident – and reading Roald Dahl and Fighting Fantasy books. Back then, going to the cinema was a rare experience – I remember it happening only twice. My first movie was The Neverending Story (1984), and the second was Willow (1988). We watched the A-team, Knight Rider, Buck Rogers, Air Wolf, and Robin of Sherwood on the telly. Renting a VCR was the thing you did (too expensive to buy one), along with movies such as Labyrinth, the Dark Crystal, Conan the Barbarian, the Princess Bride, Krull and Legend. It’s safe to say fantasy got to me at an early age.
After wemoved from a rural town to the big city, the fantasy section at the local library became a regular pastime from age twelve onwards. I read and reread Le Guin, Zelazny, Eddings, Brooks, Kay, Williams and Tolkien – starting over when finished. Working part-time jobs from the age of fourteen provided me with money to spend, and I filled my high school years with comics – Spider-man first, X-Men when I was fed up with goodie-two-shoes Peter Parker. I rented the original Star Wars films a lot, went to the movies more times than I can count and put on Star Trek and Twin Peaks at home. RPG’s on the Commodore 64, and the boardgame Hero Quest paved the way for D&D, which I still play to this day.
I spent most of my twenties studying archaeology and larping. I moved out of my parents’ home at 21 and into an apartment with friends. Babylon 5, Buffy and Farscape were among the more popular tv series, and I geeked out on Jordan, Erikson and Martin. After graduating in 2005, I worked in IT for a while. Mid 2007, I moved into the field of archaeology.
That same year, I went travelling outside of Europe for the first time, to Egypt and Jordan. I’ve since been focused on backpacking in the near East and Central Asia. It’s been a while since my last one (Iran 2016), but I’ve recently been able to fit in India, and I hope to get into it properly again after finishing the books.
