For the ask meme: 5, 9, 21!
5. Top five formative books?
Uhhh well that is a good question…it’s hard for me to place exactly what I’ve learned/taken from what books, but the five that I feel influenced me when I was younger would be:
Ranger’s Apprentice, The Bartimaeus sequence, Loch and Raptor, Animorphs, and I’d be a fool if I tried to pretend the Magic Tree House books weren’t rattling around in there somewhere.
Honorary mention to Black Beauty and White Fang for giving me a ferocious love of stories told from a non-human perspective.
9. Favorite/least favorite tropes?
I love tropes. Tropes are great. I don’t pay enough attention to the specific names and groupings of them, though, so I struggle to name any I like or dislike especially.
That said, I hate it when they’re poorly done.
Yes, love triangle. I’m looking at you. I’ve screamed about this over and over so I won’t go on a tangent, but love triangles where the “big decision” comes down to “oh, I love this person so much oh my god I can’t even breathe when they’re in the room with me, I need them in my life. Oh, and this second person who appears in book 2 for some reason is kinda cute too I guess, idk? HOW WILL I CHOOSE??!!” I get a little cranky.
(I take back what I said. One trope I love love love is “sarcastic, aloof boy who acts like a dick is actually a wonderful and caring person, he’s just shit at expressing his true feelings” wins me over every time.)
21. What aspect of your writing are you most proud of?
Honestly I have no idea what my strengths (or weaknesses for that matter) are in my writing so that’s hard to answer, but if there’s one thing I know I can get right it’s characterization. My characters always come across super clear and none of my readers ever have an issue figuring them out to downright startling levels of comprehension. They come across as vibrant, fully-fleshed, living people and that’s pretty damn awesome.
If nothing else I can craft a whole person from the ground up and I’m okay with that :p