I do like to write about characters who aren't just starting out, who have had adventures before, who have had a past they aren't that happy looking back on.

I don't think I can pick apart how I was influenced by which author. But these were the authors whose books I went back to again and again when I was in high school and college, when I first started trying to write stories.

I think it's also safe to say genre TV and movies were a big influence - the first stories I ever tried to write were Godzilla fan fiction when I was in elementary school, complete with elaborate maps of Monster Island made with multiple sheets of typing paper and nearly six feet wide. I kind of wish I still had those.

The public library my parents took me to in Fort Worth had the children's section next to the SF/F section, so I was reading adult SF/F at a very young age.