You might be surprised to learn that I was only 10 years old
when the first foundations were laid for my RHUNA series. It was a distinct turning point in my life,
and I remember it very vividly, even now.
No, nothing strange or other-worldly happened. It was just a normal day, and my father took
me to the movies, just like normal. Only
the movie we saw that day was Chariots of the Gods – an early docu
movie based on Erich von Däniken’s book by the same title. It was the first theory about “Ancient
Astronauts” ever put out there back in the early 1970s, but it wasn’t the idea
that our technology came from aliens that grabbed me. It was simply seeing ancient wonders like the
pyramids in Egypt, strange statues on Easter Island, and many other mysterious
megalithic structures that we today can’t truly explain or understand.
When we left the movies that day, I asked my father all
about them, and was simply gobsmacked that they were “mysteries” – and above
all, why hadn’t I heard about all this before?! (in all my 10 long years of
life!?) Needless to say, I dragged my
father to go see it again…and again. And
as life went on, I was always drawn to subjects like Ancient Egypt, Stonehenge,
and ancient mysteries of all kinds, picking up books about them along the way.
Then, nearly 20 years after first seeing Chariots
of the Gods, and a few years after my father had passed away, I was
going through my father’s old books and came across Thor Heyerdahl’s Aku-Aku:
The Mystery of Easter Island.
Perfect! But I knew it was there
because my father had told me several times over the years that I should read
it, yet I was never in the right frame of mind before. This time I was, and it was a revelation like
Chariots
of the Gods all over again, only ten times more poignant. I knew there and then that I had to read, not
just every book by Heyerdahl, but any other book that was remotely similar.
And so I devoured all these books about ancient mysteries
all over the world – and they truly are all over the world. Thanks to Heyerdahl, I learned that there are
even pyramid ruins on Tonga – a small South Pacific island group many people
have never even heard of. I went there
on my next vacation to see them for myself, and continued to develop a ‘theory’
about it all as I went. By this time, my
choice of books on the subject had veered into the New Age/Esoteric area, which
thrilled me even more because I was reading about Atlantis and how legends tell
of its advanced technology spreading across the globe, leaving mysterious
megalithic structures everywhere.
At this point in my life, I came to a junction of sorts
because my writing had become more than a hobby, and I had begun to consider
writing a novel of some sort. But about
what? The answer was obvious: the subject that had fascinated me the most
since I was 10 years old. It was meant
to be! There was no turning back or
looking aside after that. From then on,
it was a simple matter of creating characters in the world I had already mapped
in my head from reading all those New Age-Esoteric-Ancient Mysteries books. Four books and several short stories on, I’m
nowhere near running out of material for RHUNA, so expect to be seeing more of
her around in coming years!
