Michael Connelly -- the master of my genre -- the middle-aged crusty police detective who’s not really as hard-nosed as he wants people to think he is.

Sara Paretsky -- Her characters are so vivid. She wraps her mysteries and conspiracies around them so well that you overlook the deficiencies in the plots because you love the characters.

Robert Heinlein -- Stranger in a Strange Land is perhaps the best book ever, and in an odd way made me want to be a lawyer.

Edgar Rice Burroughs -- so many nights spent looking up at Barsoom as a kid (Mars).  My brother and I built a Martian chess set.  His stories are so bad in many ways, but so wonderful in the ways that really matter.

Ayn Rand -- the ability to build philosophical construct within an entertaining story is just brilliant.  Tell me a great story, and make me think at the same time.

Isaac Azimov -- yes, a lot of sci fi on the list, but that’s what I grew up reading.  Azimov could tell a hundred different types of stories and do them all well.

Wallace Stevens -- you probably don’t know him, but he was a poet from the early 20th Century.  He was also an insurance company executive who wrote his poems in the car while commuting to and from work.  Reminds me of me sometimes.  I studied him in college and his words are simply perfect.

Linda Barnes -- Another great mystery/suspense author with a long series of wonderful stories with wonderful characters and a very personal setting.  Read her stuff!

JRR Tolkien -- well, it’s true.  I read the Hobbit when I was 10 and never looked back.  Fantasy is sometimes overlooked, but the complexity of the story arc and the richness of the characters makes him special.

Greg Prince -- you probably don’t know him either because he writes sports, but his writing and his book publishing has inspired me and he always makes me remember why it matters to write well.