JF1ID Wrote:Greetings, everyone... I've been a quiet lurker on this site for a while, & have to say I love it! I especially get a charge out of the fact that The Man himself is in here a bunch, too... Anyhow, I'd like to share some of my earliest experiences with the works of FPW, so without further ado...(Sherman, set the wayback machine) The year is 1983, late summer, somewhere on the east coast- enter our young protagonist (yers truly @ 13-14 yrs of age, brown-haired, brown-eyed, with teeth not as straight as they could have been) in the home of an aunt & uncle, who notices a paperback titled The Keep sitting on a table. He picks it up after seeing the cool embossed cover with all the crosses on it (strangely compelling to our young Catholic) and casually flips thru the pages until he finds a passage describing zombie Nazis killing living Nazis (how cool is that) & is immediately hooked. Asking to borrow said novel, our hero tears thru it in two days. It scares the living shit out of him. He loves it! A fan is born...

Fast forward to Febuary, '85 - our hero, now a punk 15 yr old, trying to find a birthday present for his dear ol' dad whilst on a mission to buy smokes for the aforementioned old man...(ahh, da misspent days of my youth, when kids could buy cancer sticks for parents/guardians/themselves) is wandering around the smoke/magazine/racing form stand in vain. About to lose hope, our hero catches a glimpse of a paperback on a nearby rack that looks vaguely familiar, down to the weird looking gothic lettering of the title & authors' name... it even has a cool embossed cover of some sort of temple or something similar on the front. Intrigued by its title, The Tomb , he flips through, until he realizes its an FPW novel! Hot damn! Our protagonist quickly pays for his stuff and makes a hasty retreat onto the street, all the while thinking he'll give the book to the old man as the obligatory birthday present, but plotting to steal it back and read it himself. He does just that, and his life is changed. Finally, our young man has found a hero that he can look up to- an everyman that can get knocked around but still kick the bad guys' collective asses. His father is eventually persuaded to read it, and he too loves it, even commenting that it would be a great movie with Harrison Ford playing Jack (hey, it was 1985, he not only looked younger, he was younger). Years pass but our hero still rereads The Tomb from time to time, all the while hoping desperately for more...

Skip ahead to the late 90"s- our young man, after a few years in the army, has now been an archaeologist for some time (glorified ditch digger). Travelling around the country, working on various projects, he has from time to time recommended The Tomb to a few pals he thinks will appreciate it. (RJ is like a part of himself, something to be closely guarded). While working on a dig in another state,(United, not altered) our hero strolls into a local bookstore and searches for something to read. Suddenly, he sees something in horror fiction, and backpedals from the shelf. Not in disgust, but unbelievable shock! A book titled Legacies! Jack's back! Our hero is overjoyed... <--(crooked smile)

Thanks everyone for giving me the space to ramble, and thank you FPW, for giving us all a really special series of books and a truly amazing group of characters... (by the way I still have both original paperback copies of The Keep & The Tomb , albeit torn to hell and held together with scotch tape and sheer willpower- never did manage to return 'em to their original owners/ recipients) Gah, I almost forgot- I'd like to hear anyone elses' recollections of their first encounters with RJ, and what these books/characters mean to you.

JF1ID Wrote:I'd like to hear anyone elses' recollections of their first encounters with RJ, and what these books/characters mean to you.