Fernando Gamboa
I will begin by saying that I was born in Barcelona in 1970, in a humble family where books were a luxury we could barely afford. I was a terrible student, and as soon as I finished my military service and had the opportunity, I put on my backpack and went as far away as possible. For the next thirty-something years, I traveled as if there were no tomorrow, got married, got divorced, became an entrepreneur, went bankrupt, set up a school that I soon had to close, and made a living as best I could working as a diver, adventure sports guide, and even an online poker player.
When I was approaching forty, I suffered a serious illness that left me bedridden for two years, and convinced that my life was going to end there, I decided to write an adventure novel that would mix my own adventures with those of the authors from my childhood whom I admired so much, such as Salgari, Doyle, Conrad, or Jules Verne. Since I was not going to be able to travel again (I thought at the time), I would do it with my imagination, and from there my first novel was born; a work that I actually wrote exclusively for myself as therapy and ended up being titled “The Last Crypt.”
Today, fifteen years later, I write these lines for the biography on my website sitting in a café in Saigon, with ten novels behind me, now a professional writer and embarked on the journey of writing the eleventh. A new imaginary journey that I still don’t know where it might end up taking me, while I find myself on the other side of the world discovering distant lands and incredible places, accumulating experiences that fuel new literary voyages yet to be written. A journey within another journey. A book within another book. A life that embraces many others.
From the beginning, the act of writing has been inseparably linked to the pleasure of reading and exploring new landscapes, trying to evoke in the black lines of each page places that will forever remain etched in my retina: unforgettable men and women and experiences that have shaped the man I am, for better or worse. Many years have passed since I embarked on my travels around the world, but even before that, I had already done so by walking between the pages of those old adventure books that have inevitably become part of me and my writing.
Now I just hope you feel encouraged to read some of my works and ignite within you the flame of curiosity and the desire to discover what lies beyond the horizon. And in that way, in the exciting journey that a book can be, you also take with you a part of me, of those writers who shaped me, and of the authors who in turn influenced them from the beginning of time. Because we are all links in the same chain: authors and readers. A chain that extends tens of thousands of years back, when our ancestors told fables of spirits, heroes, and villains by the warmth of a bonfire inside a cave and, for now, ends in these lines.
It is up to you whether this very long chain of intertwined stories and tales stops at this point or adds one more link.
A big hug and see you in the next adventure.
