Bring me the giants.
As a writer you are influenced by other writers. I thought I would share some of the writers that have influenced me. But we are visual and audio people and this will also include some of the television and musicians who have also had a huge influence on my life as well. And I suppose the first one will not come as much of a surprise, as he is the horror writers that influences so many people, and it is Stephen King.
The first book I remember reading and it have a profound affect on me was Pet Semetary. With the now infamous line “sometimes dead is better”, this is a novel about the darkness that can follow when you mess with the natural order of life and death. As I read more and more King, there is a well-worn path of inevitability to his tales, but as this was my first experience of his work I did not see the ending coming. And this becomes a problem as I read more and more of King’s work. The speed that he can produce books, is evident in the fact that his novels follow a similar vein quite often. Bearing that in mind he has still produced some amazing books, Carrie, The Shining, its follow-up Doctor Sleep and The Cell, to name a few. I have found his early stuff and this latest stuff the most entertaining. King likes the horror to slow creep upon you, which if you care about the characters and the tale you are happy to wait for it to come, but sometimes you are left waiting for more or disappointed by the ending, (IT anyone?).
As a writer of vampire novels, I am influenced by some of Anne Rice’s novel. Again, like King, I do not like all of her novels and some of them seem to be fillings rather than proper novels, but I can not deny the influence that The Vampire Chronicles have had on me. While I have said that the Puppet Master has been created due a man in my life, there is still lot of Lestat in that character as well. The style itself seems to filtered into my work, well maybe a poor copy. Hypnotic, downright erotic and forceful tale of love and loss which bombards the senses. More importantly, the way the vampires are represented changed thanks to this series of books.
I was lucky enough this year to meet one of my influences, Shaun Hutson. For a man whose novels are drench in creepy horror and mass deaths, he was an extremely pleasant man and was happy to discuss the change in horror novels with the lowly self-published novelist. It made my year. One of my favourite novels of his is Hybrid, it’s about a writer who is struggling to complete his latest novel, (We have all been there.) The writer is on a downward spiral of alcoholism and depression. The darkness usually reserved only for his work is now being experienced in reality, and his is about to face something that even his twisted mind could not create.
Honourable mentions such also go to James Herbert, Dean Koontz, (I borrowed Stormy from Odd Thomas as my own moniker for my poetry), Graham Masterton, Ramsey Campbell, Victorian Gothic novels, such as Dracula (obviously,) Picture of Dorian Gray and Wuthering Heights.
Again being a vampire writer it will be no surprise that I have been heavily influenced by Buffy the Vampire Slayer. You can not read about Marianne and not see Drusilla in that character. However, unlike Buffy, Pandora does not have a “Scooby gang” to help her and that might be why Pandora reached the end that she did. Being a witch myself I did add elements of Willow in the novel but not as a defined character. I am also a big fan of Sci-fi and while I am a horror writer you can see the occasional reference to sci-fi especially time travel as that has always amazed me. In fact with my poet hat on I have written an ode to Dr Who.
And as I have put on my poet’s hat, I will talk about the influences in the way I write poetry. Even though I am a poet, I do not like lots of poetry. The strongest influences are Dylan Thomas and Sylvia Plath. Thomas for his lyrical and personal approach to his poems. Plath, again for her personal approach to her work, which was often a no-holds barred free fall into madness which ultimately lead to her own suicide. At 13 my own poetry got compared to Plath’s and that was how I was introduced to her work.
But for me, one of the greatest influence on my poetry is a Jarvis Cocker, singer and lyrist for Pulp. A whole article could be written about whether or not a lyrist is a poet but I think they are, and as this is my article, then what I say goes. You may be sensing a theme again but it is his frankness, especially about sex, that attracted me to his music. He was a rebel in his words, even if he looks like a Geography teacher. Songs that have specifically influenced me are F.E.E.L.I.N.G.C.A.L.L.E.D.L.O.V.E, ( I describe my poems as not chocolate boxes and roses, “borrowed” from this song,) This is Hardcore, which is the dirtiest and saddest song of Pulp’s. The metaphor of porn, not only for how bad relationship can be, the whole circus that surrounds “celebrities”, and The Mark of the Devil, again some of the lines imagery has been used in my own work. These are my influences and they will always be,
