My Literary Influences & Likes...

The list is long, but let's start at the beginning...

Around the age of 13, I got hooked on Men's Adventure series type novels (after having to read a book for school and write a book report) like Don Pendleton's Mack Bolan The Executioner novels, as well as Jerry Ahern's The Survivalist and Hank Frost They Call Me The Mercenary novels.  I don't read these types of books any longer and haven't in a long time, but I still have a deep fondness for those books, as they inspired me to write at a very early age...

Stephen King, 'nuff said.  I discovered him around 19 years old and never looked back.  Probably the single biggest literary influence (yeah, somewhere Harold Bloom is cringing in his tweed-with-leather-patches-on-the-elbows jacket) and a very big reason why I chose to write horror.  Shortly thereafter, there was Dean Koontz, Peter Straub, Robert McCammon, and Clive Barker.  Later, I added to that list with more recent writers such as Brian Hodge, Skipp & Spector, Edward Lee, Owl Goingback, Jack Ketchum, Bentley Little, Brian Keene, Bryan Smith, and Jonathan Maberry...to name just a few!

Somewhere in between, I have to give a nod to the grandmasters, such as Poe and HP Lovecraft.  I do read outside of my beloved genre when the mood strikes me and enjoy some of the Florida mystery authors such as Tim Dorsey and Randy Wayne White.  Not much of a sci-fi/fantasy reader, but loved the original Conan series by Robert E. Howard and the Dune series by Frank Herbert.  Stephen R. Donaldson of the Thomas Covenant series is brilliant epic fantasy for those Tolkien fans out there, and his Gap series (although I've only read the first two books) is very good for science fiction.

More recently, I read one of the best novels ever, The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini.  Amazing story, beautiful and haunting.  Also, per my lovely girlfriend's suggestion, read a couple Jodi Picoult novels and enjoyed her unique gift of storytelling.

Primal Blood & Shifter...

A first for me (sort of)...working on two writing projects at once.  Kind of fun, actually, and a lot of writers do this, but as I'm working on finishing up Chapter Four of PRIMAL BLOOD, I hammered out a Prologue to SHIFTER, my young readers/teen dark fantasy-slash-horror novel.  It was a lot of fun.  Will probably do a little more work on both today, we'll see, but the latter part of today will be getting Super Bowl foodstuffs ready for the grill...burgers and hotdogs, yummm!  Go G-men! ;)