Who are your favorite authors to read/follow?

G.J. Kelly To be honest, I grew up on a diet of sci-fi for the most part, and this continued in school where you simply had to be seen reading Asimov, and of course Frank Herbert's Dune. If you were reading Arthur C. Clarke, Robert Heinlein, Ray Bradbury, Aldous Huxley, or John Wyndham you weren't quite so in with the in-crowd, but not altogether 'out with the plebs' either, until Charrière's 'Papillon' came out; for some bizarre reason that book was de rigueur after the movie was released. Not my cup of tea though.

My first foray into fantasy was Terry Brooks' "The Sword of Shannara" which I stole from my brother; he's older than me and had more pocket money to spend on books than I did in those days so I read his when he'd finished. Alas he ventured off into horror and the occult with Dennis Wheatley's books, which didn't do much for me.

These days I don't read a great deal of modern fiction and I try to steer clear of reading other fantasy writers' work, in hopes that my style or stories won't be influenced by theirs (subconsciously or otherwise). Plus, I'm usually too busy writing or researching, and my tastes are rather more eclectic now than once they were (age, y'know). By way of example:

The last book I read on my Kindle was "A Journal of the Plague Year" by Daniel Defoe, which I found a little disturbing given how easy it is to imagine such events (and reactions to them) happening today. Prior to that, I read Conan-Doyle's complete Sherlock Holmes, 'Stradivarius' by Toby Faber, and 'Adventures in the Rifle Brigade' by Captain J.Kincaid.

I know this is probably not the answer you expected or perhaps were hoping for! My advice, for what it's worth, is to keep your horizons broad, and don't be afraid to venture down those less-travelled paths and alleyways; sometimes gems are to be found there in amongst the broken bottles and doggy-dollops. :)

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