Choose Your Own (Bleeding Neon) Adventure Week continues, as I tackle another reader-submitted topic. To be honest, I’m not sure if this came in response to my call for topics or if it was just tossed out on Twitter much as other random questions are usually thrown my way, but because it’s something I get asked about often, I figured I’d address it. So Keith O’Neil of New Hampshire asks “any certain authors influence your writing style?”

Well, Keith, here’s the thing: Writers are hacks. They get paid — most just barely, some over-extravagantly — to make themselves appear smarter, more informed or more clever than you. That’s not cool. I mean, sure, they might be all creative or investigative or enlightened and stuff, but why do they have to go and throw it in our faces? Even worse, they expect us to buy their stupid books and magazines and comics and…

Just kidding. But seriously, I can’t pinpoint any specific writers as “influences.” I think we are all sum reflections of that which came before us, that to which we’ve been exposed our entire lives. In both my journalistic and creative writing efforts, my writing is surely as much informed by the last episode of The West Wing I watched as it is by a Fantastic Four comic I read when I was 9.

I don’t tend to be a follower of a particular writer in any genre, I don’t read books, and I have limited patience for lengthy magazine articles and prefer my news read to me while driving. So … that about sums it up.

Check back soon tomorrow as we wrap up Choose Your Own (Bleeding Neon) Adventure Week, and if you have a topic you’re just dying for me to cover in this here blog, drop me a comment, tweet or e-mail. If I have enough overflow suggestions, I may just do this again. If you choose.