EXCAVATION works very well within the category of the traditional lost world/lost race adventure as found in H. Rider Haggard and Edgar Rice Burroughs–a narrative tradition that extends back historically to the classic scientific romances of Jules Verne in the nineteenth century– but then you’ve added your own highly inventive variant to this category of fiction (the conclusion of your novel, for example, offers a wild ride indeed not found in the work of Verne, Haggard, or Burroughs). How did you decide to write EXCAVATION, and did you deliberately construct your story within the narrative tradition of the lost world adventure?