Stuff that influenced me...
My earliest memory is from when I was three years old. I was taken to A&E by my mother because I was falsely accused of having eaten the ball bearing from the base of my toy Dalek. It was nonsense, of course; even at the age of three I knew that a human could not defeat a Dalek by attempting to eat it. Nonetheless, I'm happy that my first memory involves Dr Who.
I'm not sure how old I was at the time, but the next significant milestone I can recall is the first Fantasy novel I read: The Wizard of Boland by "B.B.".
This children's Fantasy tale about the events surrounding a somewhat unpleasant wizard definitely left an impression on me. This was the kind of world I wanted to be part of. I still have my original dog-eared copy of this book on my shelves to this day.
