I love Stephen King lol. I wish I could be as creative as he is.
Which... is there any real life author that inspires you?
I would say Stephen King is one of mine too. Not necessarily with his storylines, because except for Undead and various short stories, I haven't written that much horror. But I like his writing style. He writes in third person and is very descriptive. His stories always have a certain atmosphere that he's established. When I started writing Secrets of the Heart, I had just finished rereading 'Salem's Lot, and I can see the influence of SK's writing in the beginning of that story. As I've come back to it this summer, I've been reading more SK books to help myself stay in that style.
JK Rowling is also an inspiration to me, on a personal level as well as in the writing sense. I am not a fantasy writer, but I admire her ability to bring her characters and their world to life with her fantastic description and emotional depth and sense of humor. I wish I could write like her!
Lurlene McDaniel was the first author to really inspire me. She was my favorite from 4th grade, when I first read one of her books, really up until JKR unseated her when I was in high school. I've read more books by her than by any other author, and you can see her influence in my early fanfics especially, but also in more recent stories, like Broken, Curtain Call, Secrets, and even Guilty Roads. Her books are formulaic and fairly cheesy, but I would not be the writer I am today had I not read them over and over again as I was growing up.