Growing up, my favorite books were usually fantasy, horror, political, or mystery. I loved anything that made me ask questions about what this human experience means. Authors that had a profound influence on my writing included George Orwell, Charlotte Bronte, Mark Twain, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Aldous Huxley, and Anne Rice. My personal motivations for writing vary from work to work. My motivations for writing "2036" were the profound distress I found myself in as I read blog after compassionateless blog during the amazing political season of 2008. What kind of country do we want to become? What kind of people are we? What's the worst case scenario? What if the hardliners took over and held absolute power? What are their values? What are our values? In "2036", I explored these ideas through a negative utopian setting. In my upcoming book "Shrieking Mandrakes", my motivations aren't political distress, or questions about our values as a people. "Shrieking Mandrakes" will be Book One of Four in the Manogan Cycle, and the series focuses on interpersonal relationships, the masks we wear, what we want vs. what society wants of us, and associated themes, set in a world of fantasy and myth.