Richard Kopatschek

Biography

Richard Kopatschek is a California writer born in Buenos Aires, Argentina. While working as a carpenter in San Francisco, he studied Philosophy and earned a J.D. in Law. He speaks several languages and travelled widely, living in India, the Middle East, Europe, Latin America, and New Zealand. For more than a decade he was a sports journalist and stringer for Associated Press, covering the Olympics from Montreal to Sarajevo and World Cups from Buenos Aires to Mexico City. Returning to Silicon Valley in the mid ‘80s, he devoted his energies to growing innovative software start-ups in foreign markets until the “dot.com” bust. Fearing the end of history was neigh, he returned to his first love -- ancient history -- especially Egyptology. He now lives in Barcelona, Spain, with his two kids, where he writes about the Land of Love in “The Horizon Keeper” series and other mysterious tales from our forgotten past.

Smashwords Interview

Where did you grow up, and how did this influence your writing?
I was born in the Southern Hemisphere, in the “upside down” part of the world. When you look up to the skies at night, you have different stars over you – a completely changed firmament glares down at you! This makes for writers that are astrologers...

I was lucky enough to be born in a great cosmopolitan city – the greatest metropolis of the 20th Century in the “lower half” of the planet – Buenos Aires. I’m grateful to be Latin American because we not only feel, but think with our hearts. We take writing “seriously,” like a sacred duty, you could say. It has to do not only with the stars, but with the latitude, the geography, the weather, and with always having to “look up” from “down under.” Just ask Borges, Garcia-Marquez, Ezquivel, Allende, and many more.

How does “looking up” from “down under” influence your writing? It does so in a fundamental way. It deeply changes your perspective. I think “looking up” from the foundations gives you the better perspective, it makes you grateful. You have to build things up from a solid basis all by your lonesome. Folks in the Northern Hemisphere are cursed with having to “look down” at things – everything has been built, everything is already in its place. It’s no mean feat either way, but when you’re “down under” you have to work that much harder. I think Latin American Literature and its literary tradition shows this striving in spades. How else could a genre like ‘Magic Realism’ emerge with such vitality? That’s how I like my stories too – beyond credible – completely real in their fantastic ‘unreality.’ Why do you think we Latin Americans excel in turning reality on its head?

Then when I was in the 4th grade, my father, who was a structural engineer, moved the whole family to the “first world.” Now there were a whole new set of stars over me. I spent the rest of my formative years in California (in San Francisco and in the suburbs of the Bay Area). I believe, at least in my case, having a “mother tongue” which is different from an adopted “writing tongue” makes for interesting prose (at least, I hope so!). Juggling one side of the brain with the other keeps you on your toes. It makes you question every word and makes you a little more careful before putting something down. You could say it makes you a lot less likely to fall into “top-of-the-head” writing (a misfortune which plagues most writers). But you ought to ask an Aussie, or a Kiwi author, about that too... they’ve also adopted the English language and there are plenty of good ones out there!
How did you become interested in Ancient Egypt and especially Egyptology?
That’s the funny thing... When I was a kid, I have to confess, Ancient Egypt didn’t hold much attraction for me. It’s something that grew from within me over a long period of time, inexplicably. The life of the “Black People” (as they called themselves) seemed somehow alien and very far away. Their whole aesthetic was inaccessible and remote, yet strangely appealing. Since then everything Egyptian has continued to hold a certain fascination with me, as I believe it does for everyone living in our present time.

Although I felt something both “odd” and familiar about it when I was young, especially when I looked at hieroglyphs in books, I didn’t give it much conscious thought. When it came to “history” – at least how it was purveyed on TV and in popular books – I preferred cowboys, adventures in the high seas (pirates), even Roman gladiators seemed like more fun than the stiff ancient Egyptians with their self-satisfied smiles. They had the smiles of all-knowing parents... like blissful Buddhas who knew better. Blissfulness, I thought, where’s the fun in that? Give me blood and carnage any day!

Moreover, Hollywood (esp. the Cecil B. DeMille variety) made the Egyptians out as the real bad guys (worse than the Nazis!). Did you ever see “The Ten Commandments”? The Ancient Egyptians were an evil, wicked race, using slaves to build their pyramids and their temples to their false gods. But you see that’s what didn’t jive with me. After you whipped the slaves to death, who was going to carry those big blocks of stone up that hill? Not the guy flaying the whip, right? Like many of the fantastic fables that pass for History these days, it didn’t make actual sense.

Then, as time passed and I considered that the Black People always had that sublime smile on their faces... a different answer began to stir within me. Clearly, that smile wasn’t the smug, mocking smile of a slave owner. Slave owners don’t smile much either (they’re too embittered to actually enjoy the fruits of their oppression). More importantly, the Black People smiled even INSIDE their TOMBS! Who would do that? Who would be happy to be dead? Especially after they supposedly had enslaved millions? Folks who smiled like those paintings smile, like those granite statues smile... hmm... they had something else going on. They weren’t like the Romans, who NEVER smiled (ever see a Roman statue smiling?). The Nazis never smiled either – smiling was Verboten!

Those smiles got me thinking... Like I said; those enigmatic smiles kept me thinking. Buddha smiles all around. Buddha smiled that way because he had found something out – Nirvana! He knew something. Like the Mona Lisa, she also had a secret. And then, I began to get it into my head that the Egyptians must have had a secret too. Otherwise they wouldn’t be smiling. You don’t smile like that because you just ate a big piece of chocolate cake... or because you won the Lotto. No sir, there they were in museums, in sarcophagi, in books – all of them, without exception – smiling at us. Why were they laughing at us through all of History? When we’re supposed to be so much better than they are? That’s what got me started walking... long walks in the woods, by the seashore, in the middle of my bustling town, and the rest is, as they say, “history.”
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Where to find Richard Kopatschek online

Books

This member has not published any books.