Influential Writers

I keep adding more writers to the list of people I'd say influenced me- but I wanted to mention a couple of authors who I think were inspirational for various reasons.

It's strange that I'm writing this, considering that I have not been published yet, and am working on my first book now. but I felt like I had to.
I had a conversation with Ben the other day about my idea of a "badass." I immediatley thought of Laurell K. Hamilton's "Edward" and Tom Clancy's "John Clark-" two of the most badass characters I've read.
There are others. Vanyel, from Lackey's Magic's Pawn/Promise/Price was a badass, because he knew how to get the job done- but he's not the... role model I'm using for one of my characters- Finder.
Finder is modeled after Edward and Clark, or so I think. I am sure that there are other people he match- but when I started wrting, he was originally modeled after Edward, and slowly, in my head, became his own character.

Edward is a- I'd call him a bounty hunter but that's not exactly right- is a hitman. In a United States where shapeshifters are real, Vampires roam around, and they all have constitutional rights, Edward kills them, if the price is right.
In the majority of Hamilton's books that include Edward, he is cold and calculating, a self-proclaimed "sociopath." In fact, he even says "It's easier being a sociopath" at one point in a book- it's easier not to care about anyone, anything.
It appears that this is true, at first- but eventually it becomes clear that somewhere beneath that sociopath there is someone who cares.

Clark, on the other hand, I see as a more passionate man. I personally believe that he got totally DEUCHED over as a character in the movie clear and present danger- but in Clancy's books his violence has an aim.
In the book that introduces Clark's background, Without Remorse, Clark's lover is killed by gang members. please forgive me if I get some of the details wrong, because it has been years since I've read the book, but he gets pretty upset and basically starts killing all the lawbreakers. he does it in a special forces/black ops kind of style, using all of his knowledge (learned in Vietnam, I believe) to kill off the majority of gang members in a city.
Allthough he is cold and calculating as well, he has a... reason for killing the gangs off- Revenge. Edward, on the other hand, does not have a clear reason for the killings he does. He's simply "good at it" and will take almost any contract, no matter who, or what, it is. In fact, he once said he turned down a contract on Anita Blake (the main character of Hamilton's world) because he knew that if he helped her out, "he'd get to kill a lot more people."

My character, Finder, has some of both these characters in him, but he's different. Unlike Edward, he values life- seeing killing one person he does not know to save one he does (or to save multiple people he does or does not know) as the right thing to do.
He kills rampant shapeshifters (I'm still working out the details of what exactly, my version of a shapechanger is) because it saves people, and he is willing to kill just about anyone threatening himself or someone he values without many second thoughts. Like both Edward and Clark, he is an expert with the weaponry of his world (which is NOT america, and in a lot of ways, is not similar to america), as well as having expert knowledge of the things he hunts.
Unlike both Edward and Clark, however, he is not "simply" human. I haven't worked out all the details, yet, but I the world I have is in a lot of ways close to Modesitt's "Recluce" or "Corean Chronicles."
I have... several different species of human, so to speak. The technology level is slightly below ours in some ways, and in some ways more advanced.
Instead of cars and highways, they have a lot of steam powered cars. They DO have petrols, but not many- they don't have the ability to drill very deep, and there simply isn't a lot of natural oil on their world.
Some places also use a gate-system, similar to the gate from Stargate, but with shorter distances (measured in miles instead of light years)- and not based on technology as we'd call it, but magic.
Magic exists- under the label of a "field" that people can manipulate. There are many things that people can do with this field (including power the gates) but most people limit themselves in what they can do, and there aren't, and haven't been, many people who can use the field.
That's one of the species of human- for the hell of it, let's call them H. Sapiens Majora, that being "normal humans," H. Sapiens Adfectus, that would be the "Shapeshifters" I have- which are pretty much normal people that the field has somehow manipulated, H. Sapiens Veneficium, that being the "sorcerous" man (or the people that can manipulate the field) and Finally, the last subspecies, there being only one of them, Saryn.
I haven't decided what to call them, or, for that matter, what the differences are, except one difference is very clear- Saryn has glowing eyes. I suppose I could say it's because after a long time, Humans start getting effected by magic on the genetic level- but I'm not sure if that's how it will end up.
Six months after starting to write, I realized that Modesitt has a character named Saryn in his book Fall of Angels. I had read Fall of Angels several years before I started writing, and it is possible that the book had some influence over her name- but I originally came up with her name from the two names "Sarah" and "Erin," two of my friends. I really like y's, so that's how it ended up.
Modesitt has probably influenced me the most- I think he is a great writer, creating very in-depth and believable worlds that are (at least to me) convincing.
My main character is the prime example of this- I keep finding myself writing him in a Modesitt-esque style- that is, a main character who seems to be lost and doesn't seem to let things bug him, and ends up getting the job through absolute confidence and plain luck. It's way more complicated, and it's fairly possible that Modesitt wouldn't agree with me on how I characterized his characters----- but that's how I read it.
However, I don't write in anyone's style- not exactly. I think every writer has to find their own style- and probably does- even if you can say "hey this is similar to (whatever)"
I find myself writing in a darker style than Modesitt, and using descriptions of things that are unnerving and unreal.
My main character doesn't have a name- he doesn't remember who he is- but he is slowly becoming something very disconnected from humanity. Basically, he's your Neo/Creslin/Alucius/Superman character (I can't currently think of more) that does something and if you were standing next to him, you just kinda gasp and say "how did you do that?" and he might reply "I don't know, I just do it" or "I didn't mean to do that at all."
Like every "good" character, he has his weaknesses. Saryn will become one soon enough, but the major one is his inability to understand what the hell he can do.
Anyway, I'm gettin' tired of writing, so I'll pick it up later and start writing some stuff that's pertinent.

Have you ever read Darwin's Radio, Helm, or The Magic of Recluce? if you haven't, take a look.