Oh baby would I like to interact with Stephen King and I'll tell you why.

Growing up, my mind was fed with a constant diet of comics that stirred my interest in reading and gave me an appetite for the written word. They were beautifully illustrated too, Classics Illustrated, now sadly long forgotten thrilled me with all the great adventures that were presented in such a way that I couldn't get enough.

As I aged I moved on to DC Comics and fell in love again, with Superman, Batman and The Green Lantern, they even had the adventures of Superboy and his dog Krypto. They featured evil villains that always got caught in the end and one tricky customer called Mr Mxytptlk (hope I got that right).

Then came the new kid on the block, Marvel Comics featuring the great Stan (the man) Lee and Steve Ditko who took my reading to new levels with The Fantastic Four, Daredevil, Spider-Man and the incredible Watcher.

Then I grew up, and these great, legendary comics were put to one side, and books took over. I was forever haunting my local library for all the great Classics which I devoured, book after book, it was an incredible time.

Then came paperbacks, whole books that you could afford to buy and collect and store on your shelf at home, and just delve into them without the worry of having to return them to your library. They cluttered the house and drove my mom wild, but I cherished them.

Then, I discovered horror.

I loved them all, H.P. Lovecraft, Mary Shelley, the amazing Catcher In The Rye, anything and everything to do with horror I craved.

Then I saw a movie advertised at my cinema, it dealt with horror (which fascinated me), it told the story of a young girl who had strange powers and a psychotic mother and it featured two actors I'd never heard of but would grow to love, John Travolta and Sissy Spacek. It was called Carrie.

My introduction to the workings of Stephen King had begun. The movie shocked me with its violence, and creepy atmosphere of revenge that, surprisingly, came out of the blue. I had to read the book, and I was amazed at how differently this Mr King treated his audience - he lulled you into loving his story, then hooked you with supernatural evil that gripped and terrified you, and kept you turning the pages right until the end.

He was different. He gave me nightmares.

I devoured all of his works, and all the movie versions of his books and I developed an admiration for the craft of writing through him.

Yes, I could spend many hours picking his brain on how to structure stories, plot twists, character development, and his art of terrifying people. But most of all I would shake his hand and buy him a whisky for giving me the scariest story I ever read.

It became a movie (of course). It terrified everyone who read it and it put me off having pets forever.

Pet Cemetery.

Have you read it? Go on, read it. The Shining was scary, but Pet Cemetery is in a whole new league.

Deep, old soul;

Empty(ness) & Full(ness);

Everywhere & Everywhen;

Peace is (a) just vibration;

And so is (a) genius -

Kosmic Genie(est).

Shakespeare anyone? Anyone? Anyone at all?

Call me old fashioned, but he'd be my "go to" guy for a million questions about writing, inspiration and some goodly gossip ("What's the skinny on all this Christopher Wren business?")

If Wills was too busy for a confab, I'd choose Dame Agatha Christie because I LOVE a great mystery (not to mention: there ain't nothin' like a dame).

It'd have to be Thomas Hardy, and here's why.

In my senior AP English there was this girl and we used to butt heads like crazy. She's an intelligent human being, good writer, but we both have different interpretations of...well, everything. Including Thomas Hardy's 'Tess of the d'Urbervilles', in which a young woman named Tess Durbyfield is raped and impregnated by a man named Alec. Their child is stillborn and Tess's reputation is trashed, but eventually she moves away to a farm and meets a man named Angel and they fall in love. But after they are married, Angel tells Tess she is not the first woman he's been with. And when she tells him her story, HE IS DISGUSTED BECAUSE WHAT SHE WASN'T A VIRGIN YOU DECIEVED ME, blah blah blah, he makes her life miserable and eventually leaves the country for some 'business'...Tess moves back in with Alec, thinking Angel will never return. But all of the sudden he DOES, and then Tess goes freakin' wacky and SHANKS Alec's rapey butt, and tells Angel to marry her sister because then the fuzz come and she's executed for Alec's murder.

So.

Brittany INSISTS that Tess is 100% to blame for the events. She INSISTS that if Tess stayed with Alec in the first place, everything would have been fine.

I disagree, because ALEC RAPED TESS. Throughout the first third of the book, Tess tries to thwart his downright creepy efforts to seduce her. And it got to the point where he had to FORCE himself upon her to 'claim' her, and even then, Tess didn't stay with him BECAUSE SHE NEVER LOVED HIM. Why should she sacrifice her happiness for a reputation?

The entire book is a criticism of Victorian society's gender roles. Hardy explores how women were objectified by men who based their value on whether or not they were virgins, or 'claimed' by other men. THAT IS THE POINT OF THE BOOK. PERIOD.

SO.

The reason I'd wanna talk to Hardy is to get him to backslap the dumb outta Brittany BECAUSE SHE'S WRONG. WRONG. WRONG.

Selfish, yes. Effective? If he was like alive at this point, probably. But alas, I guess I'll have to choke her myself.

I can't honestly say I know much about the man, but... Stephen King. I've always been a fan of what his genre appears to be, and I've always been honored when people compared me to him. I'd like to meet him and get to know him much more, and I'd like him to teach me some things about how to write a good plot and strong characters in equal measures!

I think it would be utterly fascinating to interact with Paolo Coelho, who probably needs no introduction but is best known for writing "The Alchemist". His father was an engineer and, when his parents could not dissuade Paulo from becoming a writer, they admitted him to a mental institution. Twice. He escaped and became a hippy, traveled, wrote songs for famous Portugese musicians. Eventually settled into his true self, wrote "The Alchemist", and has won numerous awards. He's not only an author but an adventurer!