The Authors that Inspire Me
I’ve been a sucker for fiction for as long as I can remember. Anything from realms of fantasy to history retold always piqued my fancy. And over the course of my writing journey, I’ve discovered many different authors, all of whom have had a play in the way my own writing and storytelling have developed.
To begin, the wonderful, gothic, and heavily admired woman who really inspired me to start writing in the fantasy genre: Leigh Bardugo. Mother of the Grishaverse and hero of alternative twelve-year-old girls (me). Bardugo’s debut novel Shadow and Bone, gifted to me by my aunt after she’d finished reading it and thought it’d be something I would enjoy, entirely altered the way I wanted to write.
Initially, at the start of my writing career, I was deeply invested within historical fiction, namely WWII novels which my crime fiction-writing father and a few middle school reading teachers had gotten me into. After reading Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games in the middle of my 6th grade year, I wanted something just as nitty and gritty and politically active to read, but never had I thought I could find something like that in fantasy.
Shadow and Bone introduced me to a historically and magically rich world, one which had been thoroughly developed from the ground up and built upon even more with Bardugo’s fantastically written characters. I found myself, young and lost and searching, within Alina Starkov, the protagonist with the ability to control light. Through her I ventured through the Grishaverse, taming wild magic, fighting back against wicked forces, and forming deep connections with other characters.
Not only did Bardugo’s realm of fantasy give me that extra push I needed to find my preferred genre of fantasy and speculative fiction, but it also deeply influenced the way I wrote. I went from simple, basic lines of action and dialogue to familiar, emotional, descriptive paragraphs.
Another author who has inspired me over the years and continues to today is none other than the talented, mischievous, faerie-knowledgeable Holly Black. When I was first introduced to her novel The Cruel Prince, one of my very good friends was reading it. To escape from the threat of sweating profusely and being active in gym class, the two of us would sit against the wall. And as she read the book, I would read it over her shoulder, trying to make sense of what was happening already forty pages into the novel.
However, I finally got the book for myself and decided to give it a try. From the very first line, I was enthralled with this realm of no fishsticks, ketchup, or television. The land of Elfhame not only continued my love of fantasy, but it opened me up to the realm of the fae, inspired by Irish and Celtic folklore. Since reading The Folk of the Air series, as well as the two additional spin-off novels, I have become thoroughly obsessed with the fair folk. Black’s never-ending intelligence of the Fae gave me something new to research and include within my own novels. In fact, one of the many manuscripts I am working on right now delves into the Faerie world based off of Irish folklore Tír na nÓg.
While Holly Black did introduce me to my favorite subgenres of fantasy, she has also deeply inspired my own world-building. My realms of fantasy are built around as much magic as fantastically possible. With strange waters that show you the past and beasts never heard of or seen before, Black’s novels have thoroughly inspired me over the years to let my creativity and imagination run as wild as the fae: mischievously, magically, and dangerously.
While there are many more authors who have deeply impacted myself as a writer and the way I craft my stories, a very important one within my own genre is the gifted, mystical, and talented Olivie Blake. Her novel (and my all-time favorite book) Masters of Death introduced me to the wonderful world of urban fantasy. Mixing reality with magic, it’s now all I want to do within my novels, and what I’ve managed to accomplish in a few of my manuscripts.
But while I do deeply admire her use of urban fantasy, being able to integrate gods and monsters and beings from any and all kinds of folklore and mythology in a single book, what really has me so enthralled with her is her writing itself.
She manages to be poetic, dark, and comical all within the same paragraph. Her witty use of language is one I admire greatly and won’t stop working for until I attain it. Blake’s writing has deeply influenced my own, not just words-wise, but story-wise as well. Thanks to her talent, I strive to be just as great, which gives me even more motivation to work on my manuscripts and get my writing out into the world.
These three fantastic women, as well as many more, have deeply changed the way I think, breathe, and write as a young author. Without any of their novels, I doubt I’d even be writing this, nor anything else. Without the right inspiration, it’s hard to move forward, but I find every bit of inspiration and motivation that I need within the magical stories that these women tell. And it truly is my dream to be just like them in the literary world.
A dream that, certainly, I believe I can achieve.
