Who are your author inspirations?

This is different from the typical inspirations thread in The Treehouse. Instead, this talks about authors you find inspiring. Those people who also write stories and inspire you to keep writing. :P

Mine is Aya Kito. She was diagnosed with a progressive disease that eventually ended up killing her. Okay, you might be thinking how she could inspire me, right? The reason is because from the point of being aware something was wrong, to her death, she kept a journal. She spoke of her thoughts of the disease and all sorts of things as well. Even when she could no longer hold a pen, she continued to write these journals. This is why she inspires me. She never gave up on writing her journals, so why should I give up on being a writer? I know that even when things get tough... I can think of her determination. It always reminds me to never give up and to keep on trying no matter what.

So, tell us about YOUR author/writer inspirations~

Kameron Hurley is one of my favourite fantasy writers and her works just keep on inspiring me. Her ideas are so out of this world that I am merely awestruck at how limitless her creativity and originality is. Furthermore her blog articles about writer's struggle (in financial, mental and lingual senses, etc) really help me to hone my craft and motivate me towards my aspiration of being a published author.

Carol Berg is another fantasy novelist that strongly influenced my gravitation towards the genre. When I first read Song of the Beast, I was just a young student still struggling with syntax and the complexities of the English language (and my writing was utterly cringe-worthy). For some reason, the novel really affected and touched me and I just felt like I wanted to stay in those worlds of words.

In terms of writing advice, Neil Gaiman and Lin-Manuel Miranda no I won't stop mentioning Hamilton here. I admit to only reading a few short stories of Gaiman, but he often offers good writing advice. Same thing with Lin-Manuel even though he's more of a musical writer than a novel writer. Some folks on Twitter would ask him writing advice and he too gives out good ones.

In terms of writing style/storytelling overall, Tim O' Brien. In my opinion his writing style is interesting and his characters are well done.