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I was also heavily, heavily, heavily influenced by (and don't worry, though it's not saying much, I'm better at dialog) Star Wars. For you girls that don't quite understand how guys work, let me explain something about Star Wars. When you're a boy of seven as I was and you see a movie that has people sword fighting with LASERS it is the absolute coolest thing you could ever imagine. A running joke with my sisters for awhile was saying, "You have to try/see/hear (blank, though usually a white chocolate mocha). It'll change your life." But when I saw Star Wars, it did change my life. I was totally enthralled. From the very beginning it sucked me in and it left a permanent imprint and defined what I love in movies.
I would love to say that J R R Tolkien was an influence on my writing, and I love Tolkien. He is one of the best authors of the 20th century and the greatest fantasy author ever. Why? Because in fantasy there are two eras; BT and AR. Before Tolkien and After the Rings. No other author of any genre has ever split the history of his medium like he did. You can read any fantasy by anyone and tell if it was written before or after one of Tolkien's specific works. Tolkien did. As you can see, I love and respect Tolkien to no end, for this reason I cannot list him as an influence as it would be an insult to his legacy.
I really don't remember what the first book to make me love stories was, so instead I'll talk about the two biggest influences in that area, my parents. My mom first gave me a love of stories at a very young age. She did this by reading to me and my sister every night when we were little. Not just reading them mind you, she would get into them. For those of you that have read The Cat and the Hat Comes Back, when my mother read us that, when the "voom" showed up, she'd yell and shake the book like the voom was actually unleashed. She made stories exciting. When I was four years old I wrote my first story but I couldn't write. So what I did was I drew the story, and then dictated it to my mother as she wrote it as captions. In typical mother fashion, she still has it. As I got older, and more intelligent I started writing my stories myself but my mom was still involved. Now she's moved up to editor. She critiques most of what I write, and really critiques it. She tells me consider doing this to improve this, rework this whole sentence, figure out a better way to say this. It's amazing and it's helped me so much. There's also the fact that I was homeschooled so my mom taught me how to read and write in the first place.
My mom has been the hands on teacher and influence of my writing but my father is the secret hero of my storytelling. Like any young boy, I idolized him. I wanted to do everything exactly like him. What he thought was the most important thing in the world to me. I still love and respect him more than anyone alive but I've gotten my idolatry in check. Anyway, when I was real young, nine down to like three, I would tell these insane stories. Not lies, though that did come into play, but I would make up these incredibly illogical crazy stories and my poor father was always my chosen audience to hear about them. But through all of it, no matter how insane they got, no matter how long they got (we have video evidence, as a kid I would not shut up. My parents couldn't wait til I learned how to talk just so they could understand what I was going on about) he would always listen. Not just let me go on either. He'd LISTEN. He paid attention to everything I said and acted like it was normal (sidenote: it wasn't). After I finished or in the middle of it, he'd ask me questions about the story and make me think about it more than I had. The world would be so much better if more fathers were as encouraging as mine.
I owe both of my parents a lot. This whole thing wouldn't be happening without them.
-T.J. Mercer
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