Here’s a picture of me from 1975. I’m at the video board at WGHP TV in High Point, North Carolina. Weekends and summers in high school and college, I worked at the local TV station, running the projector and editing films. I got to see a lot of classic movies, especially the horror and science fiction films we featured on Shock Theater, which aired Saturday at midnight.

That first job makes a lasting impact, often in ways we don’t recognize. Like many truths about ourselves, it often takes an outsider to point that out. For example. I was pleasantly surprised by this review of Aztec Midnight, my first book:

“Tuggle skillfully ends most of his sections with hooks redolent of the weekly movie suspense serials that provided filler between Saturday matinee double features.” — Gordon Osmond, author of Slipping on Stardust

As soon as I read it I realized Osmond was right. I’d absorbed many of the tropes from the science fiction movies I’d edited, and as a kid, loved watching “B” serial films like Rocket Man.

Recreating the fun and adventure of those old classics remains my goal in the stories I write today. And if they get published? Why, that’s just icing on the cake.