I’ve been writing all my life - short stories since I was a child.  I started writing in earnest when I moved to Los Angeles at 23, but while I was there and for the next 15 years, I wrote nothing but screenplays.  I stuck with them because dialog was my strength, I loved movies and I received praise and nudges of encouragement from industry professionals who were possibly smarter than I was and who certainly had more experience. In truth, it simply didn’t occur to me to write in another medium.   After signing with an agent who did precisely nothing for 5 years, we parted ways, and I wrote what turned out to be my last screenplay. When I suddenly found myself as a Quarterfinalist in the 2003 Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ screenplay competition, the Nicholl Fellowship, I promptly elected to switch mediums and write a novel.    Sabotage myself much?   In actual fact, I started a web design business and went back to college first, so my first novel was born mid 2009.   Having come from that very different medium of screenplays and writing for film, much of my style comes from the movies and the directors and writers and actors who bring those movies to life. I’m influenced by the visuals and moods created by Nora Ephron, William Goldman, Stephen King...   Eclecticize much?    But my earliest writing influences are JD Salinger, Isaac Asimov, Richard Matheson, Stephen King, Ray Bradbury - some of the best writers of short stories. So, no surprise at my earliest forms of writing, and in content, no surprise at my own leaning toward the darkness in my writing – both unnatural and that darkness that is part of the human condition.    However, after barely having learned to read (Dr. Seuss and A.A. Milne were my speeds at the time), I was writing short horror stories, so apparently, the influence originated elsewhere...