It's the execution that causes me trouble.
Why?
Because EVERYTHING sent me down his path.
When I was much younger I started with comic books. not one or two, but everything i could get my paws on. i read them. re-read them, studied them, absorbed them.
Even before that I was watching The Outer Limits, The Twilight Zone, every possible incarnation of Sinbad I ran across and the same with Hercules. The Night Gallery, Kolchak: The Night Stalker, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Lost In Space, Planet Of The Apes, Star Trek....
No limits. If it was anything of the speculative bend, I was there absorbing.
When I grew into my teens I well and truly discovered a love of books. before then they were just those stupid assignments my teachers gave me. turns out I didn't much care for Hemingway. I've learned to appreciate him, but he's still notify favorite, if I'm being truthful.
Piers Anthony, Lloyd Alexander, Anne McCaffery, Fritz Leiber, H.P. Lovecraft, Madeline L'Engle, Ursula K. LeGuin, Michael Moorcock, Harlan Ellison, J. R.R. Tolkien (and again, if I'm being honest, more for his imagination than his storytelling for me), The plethora of writers and artists who made up most of my comic book reading, including but not nearly limited to Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Gerry Conway, Steve Gerber, Roy Thomas, Curt Swan, Denny O'Neil, Jim Shooter...The list is too long. Stephen King, F. Paul Wilson, Rick Hautala, seriously, folks, I absorbed them. As I write this I have been up for around 16 hours. I guarantee you I'm missing a few hundred. Marion Zimmer Bradley. What an amazing voice! Mark Twain. Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury.
Every last one of them a a hundred or so more shaped what i rite these days. They started me on the path. When it comes to sword & sorcery, if I had to pick one I'd say Fritz Leiber and Michael Moorcock. That's the absolute smallest number I can give you and it's not nearly large enough.
Tomorrow THE SILENT ARMY comes out.
ALL of them helped make it with their words and their ability to awaken a sense of wonder in me.
