Where did you grow up, and how did this influence your writing?
I grew up in Pretoria, in Apartheid South Africa. Without doubt, this has had a major influence on some of my writings.
Do you remember the first story you ever read, and the impact it had on you?
If I can recall so far back, the first two real books of substance that I tackled were Jules Verne’s “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea” (given to me by my step-grandmother) and Robert Louis Stevenson’s “Treasure Island” (given to me by my parents) when I was barely a teenager – both of these epic classics unlocked my imagination like the proverbial Pandora’s Box.
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