I don’t believe I’ve talked about the Three Pillars in any depth and now is as good a time as any to do so. We all have a multitude of influences in our lives and as a writer, there are three other authors who I consider the foundation on which I have built my work.

The first is probably the most obvious: JRR Tolkien. Tolkien managed to capture my imagination in a way no other author has. There are a number of people who criticize his style as dry, but I never thought that, even as an 11- or 12-year-old when I read through LotR for the first time. I particularly love Tolkien for the depth of his worldbuilding and that vast interconnected mythos he wove. My own great love of myth and legends is echoed by his own and he no doubt had an influence on my desire to study linguistics as well. The worlds crafted in my peripheral materials surely can’t compare to Tolkien’s legendarium, but you can surely see his touch.

Next up is Frank Herbert of Dune fame. I was older when I started reading Herbert, around the latter part of high school if I recall. Like Tolkien, Herbert has a lot going on when it comes to worldbuilding, but what I draw from him more his crafting of intrigue, the “plans within plans, wheels within wheels” and his portrayal of prescience and the twisted web of fate. Some allege Herbert is an iconoclast against the monomyth while Tolkien would be more of a codifier of it. If you accept this premise, then I guess it would make for part of a dualistic cosmos from which my stories spring.

Third is Rumiko Takahashi, the mangaka behind such works as Ranma 1/2 and Inuyasha. Takahashi’s inclusion among Tolkien and Herbert may seem a bit idiosyncratic, but Takahashi is an author with considerable range, from the romantic comedy of a gender-bending martial artist to the horror of her Mermaid series to the simple everyday slice-of-life pieces found in her short stories. I particularly like her ability to craft characters and play those characters off each other.

And there you have it, my Three Pillars. There are other influences, of course, but these are the main sources I draw inspiration from. For those of you creative types out there, who do you consider your primary influences?

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