Born in Texas many, many moons ago, I had a very diverse upbringing. Dad was an agnostic metaphysicist that worked for NASA during the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs and Mom was a Baptist preacher's kid.
No wonder I was raised so crazy/diverse (choose whichever answer fits best).
Raised on the science fiction of Heinlein and that generation, that is the sort of thing I generally gravitate toward in my own sci-fi writing. For my other stuff, I cannot place the blame anywhere, yet.
I do not have a blog at present but projects I am working on can be found at verbotham.com.