The most amazing thing to me is how much my writing is affected by the books which I am reading at the time. For instance, when I was writing my first novel 'The Animal' I was constantly reading Dean Koontz and this greatly influenced the style in which I was writing. Over the summer and more recently this fall, I have been reading a lot of H. P. Lovecraft. That kind of unique horror is incredibly influential with the way I have been writing and what I wanted to write. With the reading of all those stories, this has caused me to write more short stories. Some of them after completion seem to be decent stories, however they are nowhere in comparison with the majestic style which the master of macabre composed tales. This makes me wonder how my writing will transform over time.