Here’s a Wall Street Journal Profile of David Gemmell (link via Locus).
I thought this part was interesting: “When Gemmell was a boy, a teacher read The Hobbit to his class, turning Gemmell into a lifelong fan of J.R.R. Tolkien, whose characters became his role models. On a train platform one evening, Gemmell — a big-and-tall fellow who once worked as a bouncer — saw three men beating up a fourth. As he told the Independent, ‘A voice inside my head said, “What would Boromir do?”‘ He jumped into the fray and fought off the assailants. Years later, Gemmell told a New Zealand newspaper about receiving a letter from a fan who had gone out for a walk with his dog when he saw two men attacking a woman. He charged in and they ran off. ‘He said he did not think he would have done it if he hadn’t been reading one of my books about heroes,’ said Gemmell. ‘That’s the kind of thing that I shall carry with me, not making millions or whatever.'”
Leave a Reply