Asimov, Turtledove and Lee

Day Three of the Author Blog Challenge and today's prompt is:  Who are the writers you most admire?  Who are your writing mentors?

I have a number of authors I admire.

1.  Isaac Asimov - a very prolific writer indeed, with over 500 books to his credit.  It isn't that I admire being prolific as an isolated goal.  Rather, my admirations comes from the fact that  Mr. Asimov wrote on almost every topic you could imagine, from science fiction, science fact, science textbooks, to ancient history, the Bible- and did them well.   If you think about robots, you think about robots as Isaac Asimov wrote about them.  He changed what our entire society thought about robots.  His books and stories reached millions of people, and inspired them.

Isaac Asimov and I also share some similarities in family history.  His parents immigrated from the Soviet Union, as did my paternal grandparents. (One disclaimer-the U.S.S.R. did not exist when my family came to the U.S. but their home area did become part of that country.)  Both his father and my grandfather owned candy stores in Brooklyn, and both Mr. Asimov and my father had to work in the family business.  So in a way, I identify with Mr. Asimov in a way far beyond that of the normal reader/writer relationship.

2.  Harry Turtledove - I must have a thing for prolific authors, although Mr. Turtledove concentrates more on history, both nonfiction and fiction.  I enjoy the alternate history genre, and Mr. Turtledove excels in it.  What I admire is his researching skills.  If I do write, it may be non fiction, and researching skills are a must.

3.  Harper Lee - she wrote one of the greatest books of all time.  She refined it, and refined it, and refined it.  And then, after she published it, she never wrote another novel.  She knew when to stop.

Mentoring - if you mean the sense of a writer working directly with me, I don't have one-yet. But I do have a friend, Billie Noakes.  Billie is in my family, and although I have only met her once, she introduced me to my very first blog challenge.  I owe her a lot.  And who knows, perhaps one of the writers on this author's challenge will end up becoming a mentor.

As far as blogging, I would count Michelle Rafter at the WordCount Blogathon as a mentor, along with Tia Bach (who is also a published author of a book, Depression Cookies) and Jackie Dishner at Bike With Jackie.  They don't know me personally, and I don't know them, but I try to learn from both of them.  One other blog I would mention, Carolina Heartstrings, which has encouraged me in my Civil War blogging.  This is a blog written by two sisters, one of whom I had the pleasure of meeting at a Civil War reenactment.

Who has influenced you?