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The ones that inspire me
God
My first inspiration when writing was and still is God. I love everything about God. I don’t always live up to the lord’s standards, but I love the whole being that is God. His influence surrounds my series Sons of Thunder.
I have always had a love and fascination with the supernatural and with God; I have experienced many events that fall into that category. I have witnessed demon possession, healing, and other miracles. You can read Many of these in my first book, a true journey of faith. So, to say there is no God makes one stupid. I love the way the Trinity is designed and works. The whole angel warfare for our souls. It all has captured me from the beginning of my childhood, and I still carry the wonder with me to this day.
Theodore Roosevelt
Theodore Roosevelt is probably my favorite human being. Why? Well, because he was real. I like real people. Politicians did not want him because of this. He wasn’t always right about things, but he stood up for his beliefs. He wasn’t swayed by influence or media. As a child, he was not expected to live to be an adult, but he pushed through the failings of his body and made himself strong enough to become a boxer.
He was a cowboy, which falls into my favorite part of American history, the Old West. He wore glasses, and at the time, this was seen as a sign of weakness, so he was ridiculed; in one instance, a man continued to call him names until Roosevelt laid him out with one punch. He loved nature but did not worship it. He was a progressive but not to the extremes. It was intense but could be tender. He has always been one of my heroes and one person I would have loved to have been able to meet. And you can see him appear in my books from time to time.
Edgar Allan Poe
Like Roosevelt, Poe faced many obstacles, but unlike Roosevelt, he did not overcome many of them. I have known Poe since I was a child when my teacher, as punishment, made me recite the raven in front of the class. I fell in love with Poe. And honestly, I probably relate to him the best because, like him, my work will never be truly appreciated in my time. Poe was not loved when he was alive. He lived a lonely, cold existence, trying to make his mark but never seeing it wholly formed. But now everyone knows of Edgar Allan Poe. I relate to his heartache, financial struggles, suffering for his art, loneliness at not being understood, and longing for a good, honest companion. I have faced all of this, and it has always made me feel better knowing that someone as great as Poe went through these also, and everyone knows of him today. This thought gives me hope.
John Henry Holliday
I know Doc Holliday seems like a strange inspiration. But Holliday, like some others, faced and overcame his adversities. He was frail like a small child and yet feared. He loved life, and yet he was dying, and every day, he could expect to be his last. Most of his life was spent alone except as a prostitute here and there. But he did not give in to his ailments, nor did he fold up and die. He lived every day working up until his final days. I appreciate that about Doc. I have read many books about his life and concluded that he was not the outlaw or evil man everyone made him out to be in later years. He was a man, a young one who, yes, drank too much, most likely to ease the blisters that formed on the inside of his throat due to the illness that he suffered. He had a short fuse. He did not always play fair. But very few did in the time and place he lived. He was not the cool hand Val Kilmer gave him in Tombstone or the out-of-control doc from the movie Wyatt Earp. I would say somewhere in the middle, you will find him. He will always be one of my favorites.