I wanted to start a new section of my blog titled Influences. This section is for the rabid fans who totally geek out over authors and want to know what inspired the author to write the book they love. Because there are so many of those rabid fans of mine, lol.

I will admit to fangirling over an author I really liked. Possibly ‘stalked’ their social media pages (in quotes, because I didn’t actually, because that would have been weird, right? Right? Right.)

There have been a couple of times where some of my favorite authors actually interacted with me and I was all starstruck and feeling like a tween at a concert who got to meet the lead singer of her favorite boy band. I’m not like an author groupie or anything, but that was on the squee-ing side of cool.

What do you say in moments like that? For me it’s mostly, can I bask in the warmth of your awesomeness and hope to vicariously absorb your writing mojo?

If you’re not an author, maybe you can’t relate in quite the same way. Nevertheless, ‘Influences’ is going to be about any given topic that has affected my writing so that my rabid fans can see into the mastermind of such classics as Order of the Blood, and The Ogress Son.

Today I wanted to tackle the sense of humor many of my characters approach life with. I personally find it hilarious, like can’t stop laughing hilarious, when someone deadpans the obvious, and provides a glaring fact about a situation, as if that fact isn’t apparent to everyone.

My father, who happens to be quite a critical literary buff and makes no exception for me (shouldn’t he? I mean, seriously!! J/K I’m really glad for the unvarnished truth from someone I trust), informed me that one of the biggest failings of my books is that in serious life-threatening situations, I have a tendency to have my characters respond in unrealistic ways.

This is hard, because how much of this is subjective to each individual, and how much of it is true?

So, Die Hard. You know, the movie with Bruce Willis? His sort of snarky humor pretty much defines most of my writing. And in serious, life-threatening situations, is he super serious guy the whole time? Not a chance. There’s a certain amount of bravado, but also, I find that it alleviates dramatic tension which, in a drama/action piece can be overwhelming.

Also, the hero just seems even cooler to me when bad guys are everywhere, the hero has one foot on the banana peel, and one in the grave, but he’s still able to stay cool, to the point of being able to see the irony or humor in certain situations.

I don’t know that Die Hard is an influence per se because I can’t even remember watching it growing up, but I identify so much with the hero and how he responds (or maybe it’s just Bruce Willis?), I think it deserves a pretty big mention.

On the other hand, I don’t think “If you love Die Hard, you’ll love this vampire detective mystery!” quite works for marketing purposes.