I wrote my first “lost city in the Himalayas” story when I was fourteen or fifteen.
I had not read James Hilton’s Lost Horizon* yet, but I was actually reading a lot of E.R. Burroughs and Rider-Haggard, and quite some Howard at the time.
Their style struck me as easily emulated.
Oh, and I also read a lot of Peter Kolosimo and some Von Daniken and other “mysterious archaeology” books back then.
Food for stories.

So I sat at my mother’s Olivetti Lettera typewriter (hey, it was 1982!) and started hammering away – no outline, no no plan, no nothing.
I was actually writing in the most unpractical way I can imagine, but I had never ever read a writing handbook, so I was winging it.
And I was painfully slow on the keyboard – which helped, actually, as it gave me more time to think the next paragraph.
Anyway, in two months flat I did put together 80 single spaced sheets.
Which strikes me as interesting, as it was very much in the “original novel” pulp format – not only in contents, but also in terms of word count. Continue reading →