the meme, the meme, the mighty meme
The Rules: Don't take too long to think about it. Fifteen authors (poets included) who've influenced you and that will always stick with you. List the first fifteen you can recall in no more than fifteen minutes. Tag at least fifteen friends, including me, because I'm interested in seeing what authors my friends choose.
Alright... let's see. Consider yourself tagged, if you want. (Thanks, suzimoses!)
1. Stephen King, who always makes me want to write and for the way he writes dialogue that sounds like real people
2. Shirley Jackson, for assorted scenes in We Have Always Lived In The Castle and The Haunting Of Hill House
3. David Eddings, for the Belgariad and the Elenium and being my introduction into high fantasy
4. Caitlin R. Kiernan, for Threshold, which made me change my thesis and advisor
5. Kage Baker, the only author to make me literally throw a book across the room and refuse to finish reading an otherwise brilliant series
6. John Wyndham, who reminds me how it's supposed to be done
7 and 8. Keith Miller and Catherynne Valente, for reminding me about the joy in language and a well-turned phrase. (I have actually fangirled with a total stranger over Palimpsest in a bookstore - last week.)
9. Emma Bull, for War of the Oaks. If I like nothing else of hers, this one novel reminded me of wonder
This is really hard to do when not sitting in front of my books, which probably makes it more true.
10. Catherine Asaro, who may/may not have personal issues but showed me that I shouldn't put mine in everything that I write
11. Stuart McLean, for teaching me about voice, a well told joke, and stories that circle around to the beginning
12. Robin McKinley, for Sunshine. It always makes me dream
13. Robert Kirkman, Charlie Adlard, and Cliff Rathburn, for volume 2 of the Walking Dead
14. John Ajvide Lindqvist, for the scene in the basement in Let The Right One In
15. Diane Duane, whose Young Wizards series consistently astonishes me.
Runners up:
16. Jim Butcher, for the end of Dead Beat, which made me cheer out loud while reading
17. Jane Lindskold and Holly Black, for the same reasons as Emma Bull
18. Joe Haldeman, because I will squee with joy when I find the third in the Worlds series and that has to mean he's influenced me
19. Chuck Palahniuk, for producing books that made me think and producing one book that I wanted to set on fire. I still finished reading it, though, so he loses out to Kage Baker for producing the worst reaction to a novel.
What? I'm allowed to do runners up, and so are you. Go.
[I'm surprised to see that of my first 4, 3 were horror writers. Of the first 15, 5 were horror writers. A dollop of sci-fi, but no one's probably surprised that the rest of these authors write fantasy. What else is interesting is that most of these influences are on me as a writer, not a reader.]