TONIO FAVETTA IN HIS OWN WORDS...

When I was much younger, I loved listening to the stories my older relatives would tell about their own childhoods.  It was fun to imagine my elderly relatives running around, getting into mischief.  Around this time I also had an enviable collection of action figures, assuming you were a kid who envied other kids’ action figures.  I used to spend hours sending them on adventures, looking for treasure and fighting epic battles of good against evil as I understood those concepts.

By high School I had a girl friend who was into writing.  She encouraged me to write.  Guys have done stupider things to impress girls and since I had mostly given up playing with action figures by then and had definitely given up studying for Latin quizzes, I had time on my hands so I gave writing a shot.  It was about a guy who had to rescue his girlfriend from the underworld and fight his way through demons and hellfire.  It was a mash-up of the Orpheus myth and an 80’s action movie.  In my defense, it was the 80’s.   My girlfriend said she liked it,  but she was just being nice.  I had fun writing it though, and I have been writing ever since.