Fábio Frade Gomes
I’m a Portuguese student of General Studies, majoring in English, at the Faculdade de Letras da Universidade de Lisboa. On top of that, I also teach English at a junior school in the afternoons. It was during one of my English courses at the university – creative writing – that I began to seriously consider writing short stories. While I generally enjoy short stories aimed a more mature audience, this course proved extremely helpful, not only in teaching me how to write properly , but it also helped me to teach my own students better. You would be surprised how handy a story can be when it comes to teaching children.
My influences come from all over the place: video games, Manga, writers such as Haruki Murakami, Nika Harper, H. P. Lovecraft, Tolkien, Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman, Richard A. Knaak, and other fantasy writers. If you manage to brave your way through the book, you will notice that music and cinema also have a huge influence on the way I write: Tom Waits, Supertramp, Michael Brecker and many others are among the musicians I listen to when I’m writing. As for films, there are too many to list, but it’s impossible not to mention Humphrey Bogart, whose image is easy to identify in some stories.
I hope to meet you for another drink sometime in the future, but, until then, I hope to have helped you in finding your own short stories in your daily life. There’s always one waiting to be told when you least expect it.