My major writing influences are:

Novelists/adult:

Oscar Wilde, Dostoevsky, Thomas Hardy, Nick Hornby, Joanne Harris, Mil Millington, Katie Fforde, the Brontes, Jane Austen, George Eliot, Georg Sand, Wilkie Collins, Daphne DuMaurier, Richard Llewellyn, Gwyn Thomas, Rebecca Shaw, Josephine Cox, Helen Fielding, Phil Rickman, Gordon Houghton, Simon Maginn, Bernard Taylor, Stephen King, Poe, Salinger, WIlla Cather, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Henry James.

Poets:

Wilfred Owen, Christina Rossetti, Lord Byron, Shelley, Auden, Neruda, Edna St Vincent Millay, Elizabeth Barrett-Browning, Dylan Thomas, RS Thomas, Dorothy Parker, Langston Hughes, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Anna Akhmatova, Maria Tsvetaeva.

Childrens:

Jack Gantos, Dick King-Smith, CS Lewis, Malachy Doyle, Roddy Doyle, Angela Johnson, Jacqueline Woodson, Walter Dean Myers, Louisa May Alcott, Mo Willems, Roald Dahl, Lois Lowry, Chris Van Allsburg, Joan Walsh Anglund, Mercer Mayer, Richard Scarry, Beatrix Potter, Dr. Suess, Shel Silverstein.

Music:

Manic Street Preachers, The Sex Pistols, Depeche Mode, Martina McBride, Toby Keith, The Doors, The Cure, Kiss, Van Halen, ACDC, Chopin, Beethoven, Mozart, Louis Armstrong, Prince.

Artists:

Lord Leighton, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, James Tissot, Burne-Jones, Millais, Monet, Manet, Morisot, Courbet, Friedrich, Delacroix, Fern Isabel Coppedge, WInslow Homer, Childe Hassam, Benson, Magritte, Caillebotte, Degas, Alison Jay, James Ransome, Eloise Wilkin, Garth Williams.

Religious:

St Therese of Lisieux, St. John of the Cross, St Bernadette, St Dymphna, St Matthew, St Catherine of Siena, St Francis, St Anthony, Father Adopho, Monsignor Martin, Father Robert, Father Anthony Mary, Padre Pio, Lee Strobel, John Pridmore.

Historical Favorites:

Richard the III,  Marquis De Sade, Thomas Jefferson, Annie Oakley.

Film Star influences:

Cary Grant, Lon Chaney, Gary Cooper, James Cagney, Johnny Depp, Colin Firth, Joaquin Phoenix, Geoffrey Rush, Norma Shearer, Clara Bow, Josephine Baker, Louise Brooks, Irene Dunne, Barbara Stanwyck.

Heroes:

My Mom, St Therese of Lisieux, Bob Geldof, Thich Nhat Hanh, Booker T. Washington, Madame CJ Walker, Christina Rossetti, Oscar Wilde, Thomas Hardy, Dostoevsky, Harry Unger (my second cousin), Susan Creighton (my cousin),  Lucia Farella (my great-grandmother), Olga Talamini (my Grandmother), Marion Mead (my Grandmother), Lucielle Creighton and Anne Delaney (Aunts).