Brian Motter asked M.B. Everett:

What Authors do you write like?

M.B. Everett That's a question I've spent a lot of time thinking about — partly because the honest answer involves authors who set an intimidatingly high bar.
For world-building, Robert Jordan is the gold standard. The depth of the Wheel of Time — the cultures, the histories, the way the world breathes independently of the plot — that's what I'm reaching for in the Purple Sky Saga. A world that feels like it existed before the first page and will continue after the last.
For magic systems, Brandon Sanderson. The rigor and internal consistency of how dunamis works in my world owes a direct debt to how Sanderson taught me to think about a magic system. Rules matter. Costs matter. The reader should be able to figure out the logic before the character explains it.
For propulsive storytelling and a protagonist who uses intelligence as a weapon, Jim Butcher. Dresden taught me that a smart close-third voice can carry a reader through anything.
Brent Weeks showed me that morally complex characters in a brutal world can still carry genuine hope. And Stephen King taught me something that has nothing to do with horror — the discipline of showing the reader exactly what he needs, no more, whether that's enough to draw his own conclusion or enough to leave the mystery intact.
And underneath all of it, Tolkien. Everything traces back to The Hobbit in 1977 for me. He built the room we're all still writing in.

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