My influences would have to include Kurt Vonegut, J.D. Salinger, Robert Frost, and many assorted haiku writers.  I find myself most at ease writing in a conversational tone, hopefully with a bit of humor thrown in here and there.   While I think she goes into tooo much detail, Jean Auel is one of my favorite authors for her ability to create such amazing stories about prehistoric times.  She is able to bring such life to people who we have never known.   Another author who is amazing is Anne Rice. Her imagination is so vivid that she is able to create a world of vampires and other worldly creatures with such details that the reader is sucked into their reality.