Pete Aldin – Author of Last Among Equals

I’ve invited Pete Aldin along to chat about the top five stories that influenced him as a writer.

I’ve read his werewolf novel, Black Marks (read my review here), and I was so impressed I asked him here for a chin-wag.

The topic: “The top 5 stories that influenced you and your decision to be a writer.” 

Top 5 influential stories?

“What were the top 5 stories that influenced you and your decision to be a writer?”

A question like this instantly takes me back to my pre-teen and adolescent years when inspiration is keenest, when the creative bug is caught, and when the personality die are cast!

There were definitely a handful of books (and one movie) that infected me with the desire to create spec fic books…

Catweazle

I read Catweazle as a kid of ten or eleven and had no idea what the writer was on about. Even though it was a novelisation of a kids TV show, it wasn’t very accessible.

However, there was something about the cadence of the writing, the mood of the prose, and the beauty of the words that I fell in love with reading.

And with the fact that someone had created this to reach someone like me with that feeling of enjoyment.

Omega Man (the movie)

Something about this now quite “daggy” post-apocalyptic movie besotted me with ideas of an empty world, a world-wide reset, the lone survivor thrashing out a life for themselves against all odds and all enemies.

I can track back the writing of the Doomsday’s Child series to my first viewing of this movie.

The Narnia stories (which I see as one chronicle)

These were read to me as a child, but as a pre-teen, I lapped these up with fresh eyes.

Lewis’s ability to paint a picture of another world, a fantasy world, and imbue it with sensory data, with humor, with peril…it was pure bliss.

He made fantasy accessible to me as a boy, and again infected me with a love of the genre and its tropes.

Now when I look at these books, I find them simplistic and clunky, but when I was at the age of their target audience they were pitch perfect.

Jaws

We take a dark and violent turn here, lol. I read this novel at 13 or 14.

And even though I only understood about half of it, I was totally thrilled by the way words (even Benchley’s words haha) could transport me into another place and another person’s experience. In particular, his take on the shark (the ‘great fish’) and its point of view blew my mind.

Hooked me on monster/creature thrillers for my adolescence and well into adulthood.

Probably led (in a twisty-turny way) to me eventually penning a monster novel of my own: Black Marks.

The Mote in God’s Eye

One of the novels first read in my early 20s that cemented my trajectory into writing space opera.

Actually, it was more this book than the big Star franchises (Trek, Gate, Wars…) that fired my imagination for the possibilities of space travel and space civilisations.

These authors nailed the most unique and memorable alien species, then plunged their mission team into peril in those aliens’ star system.

If you haven’t read it, do yourself a fave and go get it. Now. (But don’t bother with the sequels: they’re truly awful).