The #evernighties Thursday Weekly Author Blog Challenge is a once-a-week blogging adventure brought to you exclusively by Evernight authors. Each week, we answer a new question (listed below and borrowed from MFRW.org) and the answers will be featured on the Evernight Reader’s Group on Facebook, as well as our own blogs and social media platforms. Check out the group or follow the #evernighties tag to see how other authors answered this week’s question!

   
So, the topic of the day is, “A book that has influenced my life”.

More than a romance author, I am a suspense/thriller/horror author. More than steamy sex scenes, I love fast, hair-raising, edge-of-your-seat action scenes. I thrive delving in the dirty and the gory, I dig imagining blood and brain splatter, and I grin anticipating how my descriptions will make readers cringe. Yeah, I am that sadistical kind of author that goes for the kill, sometimes achingly slowly, building the tension, sometimes lashing out brutal words like a punch to your gut.

Where did I get all that nastiness from, you ask, in the world of litterature? Well, if I mention Mo Hayder, James Patterson, Lisa Gardner, Karen Slaughter (such a fitting name!), Ed McBain, Robert Ludlum, Jonathan Kellerman, Chelsea Cain, Ian Rankin, and of course Stephen King, to name just a few, you get the drift. But more than any other author, Cody McFadyen has lit my murderous fuse and given me the lethal inspiration I’ve been feeding on since, with his first book Shadow Man:
    

    
To answer the topic question – has this book influenced my life? I would definitely say so, as it has inspired me to write and thus helped me become a published author, an endeavor that has completely changed the “quality” of my inner, private being.

Here is what I wrote in a review a few years ago:

“This book is without a single doubt my all-time favorite, one I have read again and again, a true source of inspiration on so many levels. 1 – The writing is top-notch, intense, pulls you forward, urges you to read on. 2 – It’s so full of emotions and gore and frantic action and suspense, you’re constantly sweating and holding your breath as you turn the pages at ligthtning speed. 3 – The main character is so alive, you crawl into her skin and feel her pain and think her thoughts before they’re even put to paper.

I want more of this, so much more, and although the sequels are very well done, I have yet to read a book that has shaken me so thoroughly and torn, stolen my soul as I was engulfed in the story and taken away to a different world.

Whoooo! I’d give it 10 stars if I could. But let it be said – it’s not for the soft-hearted.”