In the scheme of things, I haven’t been writing very long. Though I majored in English with a creative writing emphasis in college many moons ago, I didn’t start writing seriously until 2007. In an epic case of ‘be careful what you wish for; you just may receive it,’ that manuscript was named a 2009 Golden Heart finalist, won a paranormal Daphne, and sold to Sourcebooks as part of a three-book deal. Though it took me a long time after college to scrape up the guts to actually put pen to paper (or set fingers to keyboard) I like to think I was…in training, preparing for publication all along—by reading other people’s books. Following are some of my favorite teachers: Anne Rice: The world-building in “Interview with the Vampire” absolutely knocked my socks off.  Rice’s New Orleans was lush, dark and dank. You could smell the rot and the perfume. She had a new take on the vampire legend, and her languid, sensual vamps had a distinct homoerotic edge that I hadn’t previously been exposed to. Marion Zimmer Bradley: Reading “The Mists of Avalon” was a transformational experience for me. As a college student in the 80’s, I found her…