It's Only Make Believe

I was just over on Facebook checking my account while listening to Conway Twitty going on about his love life. I never seem to post status updates over on Facebook anyone cares about. Anyways, I've been adding/joining fan groups of some of my favorite authors, writers that have very definitely had an influence on my style, approach or thinking about writing. I've been wanting to make a list of names for a while. I suppose now's as good a time as any and a blog is as good a format as any.

Here ya go:


Dashiell Hammett (author of Red Harvest and The Maltese Falcon)

Raymond Chandler (pioneer of pulp noir; author of The Big Sleep)

Allen Ginsberg (Beat poet extraorinaire; author of Cosmopolitan Greetings and Howl)

Jack Kerouac (author of Blues and Haikus; Beat poet)

Richard Matheson (author of smart science fiction that delves deep into philosophy and even spirtualism; author of What Dreams May Come, I Am Legend -- the Will Smith movie SUCKED SHIT!!! BOOOOO!!! -- and The Incredible Shrinking Man)

Ernest Hemingway (pioneer of contemporary American literature styles; author of The Old Man and the Sea, For Whom the Bell Tolls and A Farewell to Arms)

Albert Camus (existential philosopher; author of The Stranger and Exile and the Kingdom)

Ray Bradbury (author of Golden Age science fiction and fantasy; author of Zen in the Art of Writing, Dandelion Wine, The Halloween Tree and Fahrenheit 451)

Philip K Dick (where other authors write about science in science fiction, Dick has written about the soul of human expression through science - if that makes sense; author of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? -- which was made into the movie Blade Runner -- A Scanner Darkly and Minority Report)

Henry Charles Bukowski (a guy that lived a rough life and simply wrote about it when he wasn't working or spending time at the tracks like Hollywood Park or Los Alamitos; author of Ham on Rye, Post Office and Tales of Ordinary Madness)

Robert E Howard (creator of Conan and pioneer of the Sword & Sorcery genre)

This is a short list, of course. But it hits all the biggies.

Read them!