Writers often feel driven to tell a story, and have a passion for the characters and world… and sometimes, they feel something just a little bit more. Dirk Strasser understands the next level of authorial engagement in a story, and in this Big Idea for Conquist, he goes there, and takes you with him.
DIRK STRASSER:
Are we all trapped by what we desire most? Where is the border between determination and obsession? As I was writing my historical fantasy Conquist over many years, I began to wonder whether my obsession with it—first as a short story, then as a novella, then a screenplay and now a novel—was as destructive as the conquistadors’ fanatic pursuit of gold.
I can tell you the precise moment my obsession with this story started. I was nine years old and in hospital for an extended time when a family friend gave me a copy of Hergé’s Tintin and Prisoners of the Sun (soon to be a Peter Jackson movie). It’s a graphic novel set in Peru which features a lost city of Incas who have remained hidden from the modern world and continued worshipping their sun god.
I lost count of how many times I reread that book during those bedridden weeks. It was the first time I experienced the immersive magic of fiction. I lost myself in the story every single time I read it. The noise of the crowded ward, the fear of my next operation, the tedium of the days, the chaos of acrid medical smells all disappeared, and I was there with Tintin and Captain Haddock, trekking in knee-deep snow, scaling the Andes, and fighting my way through the Amazon jungle. How was this happening? Even when I knew off by heart every plot twist, every turn and surprise, I was always as thrilled and breathless as the previous time. While I was in the story bubble, nothing else in the world mattered. It was pure joy in a joyless place.
Many years later I trekked the Inca trail to Machu Picchu in Peru before it was crowded with tourists (thanks to the Shining Path terrorists being disbanded just months earlier), and it felt at times as if I was exploring some new territory. I can still remember the morning when I stood on the steps below the Sun Gate where Cristóbal stands in the opening scene of Conquist, like him blinded by the rising sun…
Conquist: Amazon|Barnes & Noble|Bookshop|Powells
Source: The Big Idea: Dirk Strasser
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