Fifteen authors, happily ever afters and the ugly truth.

I got tagged by my friend Ian Healy in one of those things that get sent around the Facebooksphere. You know what I'm talking about, right? Usually it's a list of some sort, then you tag people whose answers you'd like to see?

This time it was fifteen authors who have influenced me. You're not supposed to think about it very long, just write down the first people that pop into your head.  I sat down and thought and comprised the list below. It's kind of a mish mash of people...

• Judy Blume
• Stephen King
• Margaret Atwood
• Jay Asher
• Elizabeth Scott
• Sylvia Plath
• Dennis Lehane
• Gae Polisner
• SE Hinton
• Hans Christian Andersen
• The Grimm Brothers
• Chris Crutcher
• JK Rowling
• William Shakespeare
• Wally Lamb

As you see there are writers of fairy tales, tragedies, mysteries, contemporary and juvenile fiction. They range centuries from Shakespeare, born in the 16th century to very contemporary writers, some of which are still among us.

Even though they seem very different, I think there are some common threads, and that is the reason I believe they have been such a great influence on me.


These are writers who, no matter what world they write in, fantasy or reality, they understand that life isn't always pretty.  Even though you may get a message, a moral, or a ray of home in the end, there is not always a happily ever after. 

When you do get the happily ever after, sometimes the path leading there can be horrific and ugly and difficult and not easy to navigate. And sometimes they didn't all live happily ever after, but they simply lived and that was enough for them. 

I think that is why these writers came to mind. Because when I write I don't write what's easy. I write about the evil step-sisters, the Black Forests, the dark wizards of real life. In my books you don't always get to keep your fins, get the girl, get out of the cold, and sometimes just surviving is your "happily ever after."

Why? I don't know. I'm just drawn to it. Will I always right about that stuff? Who knows? I do know that every writer I mentioned above has a hand in making me the writer I am now. 

 Maybe in a not so distant future, when these lists are passed through Facebook, or whatever the social media de jour is at the time, my name will be on someone's as a writer of influence and I can give back what the authors above have given to me.

BTW, the first episode of my new video series is up. Here ya go.

Sigh: Death, and the Why's, and the Media

Another massacre. 

I don't even know what to say about it really. I'm almost speechless. What is there to say? All I can ask is why? Especially when, yet again, the death of a child is involved. If you're so angry and unhappy with the world, just blow your own brains out and let everyone else go on in this miserable world.

Why?

This is why I don't read or watch the news. I almost don't want to know about these tragedies. Ignorance is bliss, right? I didn't know anyone there, but I knew people who knew people there. Who were waiting for calls. Ugh.

And the media. They only perpetuate things. They only give these murderers what they want. You know what I want? This is what I want. I want the families of the dead to be notified. Then I want the dead to be named on television so that everyone else with family there knows it wasn't theirs, then I want to see no more of it. Why? Because that's what these killers want. They do it for attention. Maybe if we stop giving these depraved, crazy, sociopaths all this attention they would stop. They would stop killing children, and innocent bystanders, and people just out for a night at the movies, and people just going about their normal routines trying to make a living for their families, and the people who end up trying to save them.