The Land Of Hidden Men – Edgar Rice Burroughs, 1931 ★★½

Lost and Found in an Ancient Jungle Kingdom

Somewhere in my primordial past, decades before my birth, a man looked deep into some misty realm and espied the half-naked youth, bounding across a jungle just a half-step ahead of deadly peril, whom I would someday become, if only in my imagination.

That man was Edgar Rice Burroughs, who put pen to paper and crafted fantasies for a boyhood I had yet to reach.

The Cave Girl – Edgar Rice Burroughs, 1913-17 ★

All Perspiration, No Inspiration

The strongest feeling you get, from both reading Edgar Rice Burroughs and reading about his amazing career, is how critical the principle of flow was for him.

There’s narrative flow: Keep everything moving all the time, so the reader keeps reading.

There’s concept flow: Always work in new ideas in your fiction, even when they closely resemble older ones.

Then there’s product flow: Never stop writing, because you need the money.