So the song goes (and it is a good song).

Who is it that inspired you, who fanned that creative and curious spark?

I love the whimsy of Terry Pratchett, the darkness of Stephen King, James Herbert and Clive Barker.  The easy-going action of Bernard Cornwell and his antihero Richard Sharpe.  I’d even offer up for praise the sheer pulp fiction brilliance of Jerry Ahern (look him up!). 

My all-time favourite book being Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath – such brilliant use of the everyday to create drama – genius. 

I’m not trying to list the great and the good, more I’m trying to demonstrate a breadth of inspiration and an appreciation for the numerous ways to tell a tall tale.

Styles come, fashions forever fickle, some stories are forever hip, some passing phases. 

Some writers and their tales hit me at the right time and make the impression just when it is needed.

Like many I went through a dystopian phase – Orwell/Atwood/Huxley et others.

Intertwined with this was a passion I hold for the long tale, for those who could make the telling of just one day in the life of someone an entire book.

I did my time reading some great Russian writers.  The social commentary that wove in and out of each tale, the mirrors that they held up to laugh at us and scold us in equal measure; Dostoevsky, Nabokov, Bulgakov, Zamyatin and of course Mr Solzhenitsyn. 

And in with all the greats namedropped, I make no claim for equivalence, no statement other than they inspire(d) me.

But if I were to steer you towards suitable references for my tall tales, if under duress I were obligated to offer up writers of skill that you would know, then only because the lives of small kittens were at stake I would I say imagine if Philip Pullman wrote the Victorian adventures of a young woman who had the grit and resilience of Lisbeth Salander from Stieg Larsson’s Millennium trilogy, and that this young woman lived in the dark and dangerous world of Caleb Carr’s Alienists – then I’d go yeah, that’s about right.   

But back to inspiration and heroes.

It is an adage, and it was the start of this missive.

The art that is created is what lasts, the lives mistakes and failings of the writers quickly forgotten.

Questionable people can create superb art.

Not too sure if I’ve lost my thread – possibly.

Such are the struggles of a one-sided conversation…

Whatever you are doing stay safe, remain sane and try your best to be happy!