Background to The Staff of Moses

The Staff of Moses is inspired by my love of globe-trotting adventurers who blur the lines between heroic seekers of knowledge and downright criminal scoundrels. For every friendship Indy has with local excavators and street rats, he has probably double crossed or murdered a dozen more. Lara Croft and Nathan Drake aren’t any better, but millions of people still love the books, films, and games which star them. What all these characters have in common is deep roots in the pulp fiction of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, such H. Rider Haggard’s tales of Allan Quatermain leading bands of hapless European treasure hunters through the unmapped depths of Africa. Many of those stories were initially published in cheaply printed “pulp” magazines with garish covers, outrageous (or pretentious) interior art, and numerous advertisements for products and services that might be generously described as sketchy.

Book Index: The Staff of Moses

Next Chapter: Chapter One - Dark Eyes