Influences
I’m the type that likes to read widely and in a variety of genres. I like to read across cultures and have a particular interest in getting out of the usual rut of whatever the genre’s typical fair is.
Therefore considering this, here are some of my influences.
I started with L.M. Montogomery as one of my favorite authors. I liked the strong female protagonists. She also taught me to treasure and listen to language and how it moves.
Dr. Suess, Shel Silverstein, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Anne Frank and Jane Austen were also childhood favorites.
I also liked the deconstruction of language in Gertrude Stein.
As a child, I also read a fair amount of mythology and folktales–particularly Egyptian, Greco-Roman, Russian, and Asian. I also read West African, African American, Roma, and various Native American tribes, particularly of the Iroquois Confederacy. I really like the Irish and Celtic tales too.
I also got into anime and manga as well, which I mainly studied to get out of the Western psychology of story and also it was an attempt to connect tothe popular media of Asia. I really like Naoko Takeuchi, who is the creator of Sailor Moon among other works. On the outside it seems like she writes fluff pieces, but some of the themes are dark and gripping as well. I’d like to think that anime and manga helped me fix the middles of my stories because they emphasize the journey more than the result. I also like Taiwanese, Japanese and Korean media in general.
As for Speculative Fiction, I read Marion Zimmer Bradley, Andre Norton, Anne McCaffrey, Mercedes Lackey, L.E. Modesitt, Margaret Ball, S.M Stirling, Jody Lynn Nye.
I also of course read Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, but they didn’t strike a chord with me as much. I particularly connect with stories where it’s about character change and evolution. Coincidentally, most of the books that deal with social problems on the one-on-one scale tend to be women… so I tended to read a lot of female authors. I’m a fan of tight world building with lots of attention to details and culture. If the language flows with it, that’s just an extra.
Overall favorite authors I like are Patricia C. Wrede, Morgan Llywelyn and Melanie Rawn.
I also read a huge chunk of non-fiction when I get the chance. I spent a lot of my childhood watching discovery channel, Animal Planet and cooking shows. I also watched History shows as well. I also spent that time reading up on the publishing industry and the history of it way before Gutenberg put out his first printing press to the present.
I like cultural anthropology and particularly like fantasy and science fiction that looks at this aspect and does it with a careful and culturally sensitive eye. If the author focuses on a culture or builds a culture unlike the Medieval European Sword and Sorcery, I tend to be a lot more fascinated. I tend to be frustrated with all white casts and often with token “other” characters of a different race, just because you need one here.
I’ll admit the only High School book I had assigned that I liked was Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger. I caught myself reading the whole thing and then having to read it again for class because I missed analyzing it.
Short stories that caught my attention were Mark Twain’s stories, particularly about God and the Devil (more than his popular ones) and Leaf by Niggle by JRR Tolkien, which isn’t very well-known.
I’m also a fan of putting in random references to Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and Monty Python as Easter eggs.
And because I read a variety of genres, I also like reading cross genres and do so with enthusiasm. I also tend to not like writing to a genre 100%, but mixing in other genres along the way.