Masters Degree in Creative Writing, Seven novels published by Awe-Struck Ebooks, A little fickle about genre. My earliest novels were Regency romance/murder mysteries. Very fluffy. The last two are Science-Fiction adventure--also somewhat  fluffy. My current project is a dark fantasy/horror featuring plenty of tentacles and ichor--of which I don't think you can ever really have enough. And actually kinda on the  fluffy side. Major influences? Tolkien, Jim Butcher, Anne MacCaffrey, CS Lewis, Jane Austen, the Brothers Grimm, classical mythology, Joseph Campbell, HP Lovecraft. Ha ha, see how I slipped poor Jane in there with all the rest? Poor thing looks so lost and confused. Until I was thirteen or so, I thought all the stories in the world were floating out in the ether somewhere until some kind of machine extracted them and printed them out as books. Imagine my astonishment when I realized that the big words "Anne McCaffrey sprawled across the top of Dragonquest meant that both Dragonflight and Dragonquest had been written by the same HUMAN BEING! The obvious implication is that if stories could be created by PEOPLE, then I could do it, too. So I did. Cool, huh?