Do you think that your writing has been influenced by other authors?
I do in my writing style, not in the stories I tell. I believe six writers to have influenced the way I write: Jane Austen, Mark Twain, Charles Dickens, Louis L’Amour, Robert Heinlein and John D. McDonald. I know it’s a very wide range group of writer….
Well, it certainly tells a lot of the wide range of your readings.
(Laughs) Jane Austen gave me an insight in the relationship between characters and in what we might call “social relationship”.
Mark Twain did something that was unheard of, in his time: he had people speak the way people really spoke. I think it was revolutionary. Twain was the first to use the common language of the day, he taught me to use language the way I wanted. Dickens did some of the same, but later.
L’Amour, John D. McDonald and Heinlein all gave me something about the use of language, mainly a certain freedom in using words, a lack of rigidity.
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