Urgh. Attempting to implement javascript into my photo site, but despite my experience with other programming languages, the thing refuses to do what I want it to! Oh well, guess I'll have to use regular old html for this one...

Cry to Heaven is increasingly becoming one of my favorite Anne Rice books (second only to Violin). I've only just begun to read Part II and already I'm captivated. I guess one of the reasons why I love Mrs. Rice so much is the exact reason why so many people hate her: her descriptions and attention to detail are so intricate they're almost religious. But, with a good amount of patience, time, and an over-active imagination one can be easily caught up in this net of higher vocabulary. Then again, other friends of mine just hate her because she's more or less monopolized the vampire genre for the general public.

Don't get me wrong, I don't exclusively gravitate towards authors who write like her. All my favorites are exactly that for many different reasons. In Poppy Z. Brite I love her seductive and inviting descriptions of the purely macabre (specifically the scenes of necrophillia and cannibalism in Exquisite Corpse) and also her constant us of homosexual characters which helps me to relate all the more to the story being told. (Yep, like Liz another gay man trapped in a woman's body.)

Herman Hesse's work is favored for it's constant themes of self actualization and discovery. The messages his books deliver are made equally potent in that my current age and position are of the self-searching teen before one makes their transition into the adult world of jaded steel.

Ray Bradbury is admired for the issues he always addresses in his books which exudes social commentary that, in the case of censorship in F451, are as important and current as when the book was first written.

Adam Lee for his ability to create worlds. In the Dark Shores trilogy of novels, he creates a world just above ours where magic exists in the form of Charm which, through his wording, has infused the land with it's own mythology and folklore separate from almost everyother culture existing.

Dante for the great masterpiece of The Inferno. Poetry put to story in a grand epic to the farthest reaches of hell and the afterlife.

So many authors to mention, so little time. Well, little patience anyways. That and lack of memory trying to remember all of them.