An artist, engineer and a poet,  I wrote technical manuals for a living. I wrote standards and procedures used by industry and the U.S. Military. I write short stories and poems. I edit the work of others and feel that I am influenced by every writer I've ever had the pleasure of reading. Some have made a much greater imression than others. I can't possibly list them all, so we'll have to settle for a miniscule, abridged list.  Charles Dickens, John Fante, Roddy Doyle, Frank Delaney, John Gardner, Elmore Leonard, Gunter Grass, Herman Melville, Daniel Boorstin, Annie Proulx, Carolyn Chute, Richard Adams, Mark Twain, David McCullough, Malcom Gladwell, Henry David Thoreau, Jane Austen, Charlotte and Emily Bronte,  Josef Conrad, Victor  Hugo, Anais Nin, David Mamet, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Umberto Eco, Ernest Hemingway, Jack Kerouac, Edgar Allen Poe, H.P. Lovecraft, Saki, Tennesee Williams, John Steinbeck, Walt Whitman, Oscar Wilde, George Orwell, William Shakespeare, and many more.