I don't make outlines for what I'm writing. I don't even do notes most of the time. I just write directly from what I have in my head in chronological order from start to finish. Then I go back over each sentence a hundred times and fuss over them neurotically. I think this Oscar Wilde quote describes my approach about right.
"This morning I took out a comma and this afternoon I put it back again."
I'm also a lousy typist. I'm slower than most because I have to look at the keyboard while I methodically punch out the words.
I don't read very much either. Again, it's because I'm slow. When I was younger, I absolutely hated reading. In school when the class was assigned a book to read, I'd either meander through the pages at a snail's pace or just give up and pretend to read.
As an adult I tried to get more into reading. Gradually I did get a little faster but it still takes me half a year to finish a novel. Not entirely because I'm slow but because I also can't focus on books for very long. When I started looking for books to read, I didn't even know what I'd like. I'd walk through the book store and pick up anything with an interesting cover. Maybe I'd like sci-fi. I picked up Anvil of Stars by Greg Bear. Don't do this. Don't start with Greg Bear.
So I'm a writer that can't type and hardly reads. Suffice it to say that I don't know from books. I know from movies and video games. That is where my influences come from. I can pinpoint two specific works that inspired the creation of Soulbond. The first is Armitage III Polymatrix which is essentially an animated Bladerunner. I saw it when I was about 13 and something about it resonated very deep within me. Maybe it's Kiefer Sutherland's voice. The first version of the movie I had was a VHS tape I recorded off of the Sci-fi Channel, (now "Syfy." Seriously, what the hell is that?) I was so amazed by this move that I watched the tape over and over, multiple times in a day. I've seen a ton of animated sci-fi movies since but nothing else hits the spot like Armitage.
The second thing that inspired me was... I'm hesitant to say, Mortal Kombat. Mortal Kombat is a fighting game that is different from other fighting games. There's more blood and gore. And you can definitively kill you opponent. It's about superhumans and demigods trying to kill each other with spectacular superpowers. That's what I want. If you look at Soulbond and its sequels you'll find that the encounters are very much like they would be in a fighting game. It's often one on one in an interesting location that may even include some form of deadly hazard. Of course this aspect could just as easily have come from Indiana Jones, which has been spliced into my DNA since I was about six.
As I've already said, the fight scenes and the action were the first things I conceived. After that I had to ask myself the obvious question: why are these people trying to kill each other?
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