Charlie Lathe
I started writing after I read Thomas Pynchon’s Against the Day. The book was just so nifty that I had to try telling a story myself. So I wrote 150 pages about my friends and I sailing on a flying boat with a talking figurehead, battling yetis and demons.
On weekdays, I teach high-school English. The rest of my waking hours involve strategizing with my wife on how to chase our son around the playground without exerting too much energy ourselves, watching Arrested Development basically over and over again, and playing healer in any video game that’ll let me.
Lots and lots of people and baked goods have inspired my writing, and life in general, really. Other than Pynchon, there’s also H.P. Lovecraft, Bigfoot, Jackie Chan, Terry Pratchett (the Discworld books are probably the most entertaining stories I’ve ever read), the movie Fire in the Sky because it scares me more than anything else has ever scared me, Neal Stephenson, the Ghostbusters, and milkshakes.
Last thing: I accidentally typed Discoworld up above instead of Discworld, and now I need someone to write a Discoworld book.
Dashe ramsey
I wrote my first story when I was about 9 years old. I had just played Final Fantasy Mystic Quest and somehow found the story-telling elements compelling (there were literally none). That first story was basically a description of actions I’d taken while playing the game, put to themes and ideas I’d come up with and read about in books. It was a choose-your-own-adventure (though I had no idea what those were back then), because I wanted it to be like people were playing a video game.
Between other video games, books, movies, and cartoons, I developed an avid appreciation for story telling. My influences are too many to name, but a few are: Robotech, Aliens, Calvin and Hobbes, and The Iron Dragon’s Daughter. The cut scenes in Ninja Gaiden (for NES) blew me away, and I used to reenact its opening scene with my best friends.
As I grew older, horror content began to influence me a lot more—especially stuff from Lovecraft and Barker. And anything else where evil won.
I didn’t realize this final influence until recently: I grew up surrounded by a lot of interesting and powerful women, which filled me with passion for similar women in stories. Especially my own.