Talia Quinn tagged me on facebook to write a list of 15 authors who influenced or stuck with me. The rules were to list 15 without thinking, taking no more than 15 minutes.
It sounded like fun. Some of the answers that popped into my
My World of Pooh Book with the remains of what I believe was a sparkly unicorn sticker with my name on it
head surprised me. Here’s my list:
Edna St. Vincent Millay for being raw and beautiful and breaking every rule.
Laura Kinsale for the complexity of her fictional worlds.
Julia Quinn for forever changing dialogue in historical romance.
Tessa Dare for richness of language and character.
AA Milne for writing with honesty about ordinary things.
Longfellow because my Dad read him to me when I was little, giving me a taste for things sweepingly romantic.
Helen Fielding because Bridget Jones made relate-able anxieties extraordinarily funny.
Jane Aiken Hodge for her suspense-filled historical romance rich with historical detail.
Elizabeth Hoyt for scenes of intimacy and passion that live on after the book is finished.
Joanna Bourne because how can she not be on this list?
Victoria Holt for getting me to my library as a teen and making me feel that her shelf was truly a gateway to a magical world.
Lisa Kleypas because I have worn out and had to re-buy more than one copy of several of her books.
Mary Balogh for making family and friends as essential in her fictional worlds as they are in real life.
Sondheim because I learn something new/understand something better every time I listen. (Lyricists count as poets, right?)
Judith Ivory for characters so flawed, so real and so, so beautiful.
There you go. If I’d have taken the time to think about it, the list would probably be different…but this is exactly the order these authors came to mind. What are your fifteen?