Terry Pratchett, Daniel Keyes, Janet Evanovich, James Patterson and Grant Naylor (that's two people). Terry Pratchett is my topmost fave, the rest depend on my genre mood.

Flowers for Algernon, because it's intelligent and emotional, and broke through my barrier that resist terrible spelling.
King Dork, because it's a fascinating look inside an intelligent and unique teenage mind with a great back story and wonderful payoff.
Good Omens, because it's one of the great examples of two authors coming together to create something excellent.
Red Dwarf Omnibus, because I grew up with Red Dwarf and love reading all the extra information they couldn't fit on the tv show.
Terry Pratchett's Discworld, because I can't pick just one.

Discworld by Terry Pratchett - Fantasy/Humour
The Uglies Trilogy by Scott Westerfeld - Science Fiction/Teen Fiction
Stephanie Plum by Janet Evanovich - Humour/Action/Romance

Reading, watching animations and sitcoms, daydreaming, walking, hunting down fan art, creating art, music, games, singing for fun, and of course, attending to my job and housework.

There's so much more to writing than just typing or scribbling. It's a constant bubbling of ideas, solutions and situations. I absolutely love having a story bubbling away at the back of my mind, throwing up clues or problems as I go about my business. It's the eternal song playing that you don't notice until you find yourself singing it. It's the means to create the worlds inside my head, a daydream that never need end.

The greatest joy of the writing itself though would have to be that magnificent moment when you enter the zone, and everything just flows. That is truly exhilarating.

Three levels of mess.
Coffee cups, empty coke cans, headphones, hand lotion, hat, papers, nail polish and keyboard with screen on first level.
Two drawers by my side filled with boyfriends electrical equipment. Hollows above me filled with video game cases, shoe boxes filled with wrapping paper and ribbons, a wacom, backup devices, Android Karenina and a whiteboard with things to do. Top shelf holds art equipment from pens and scissors to books on the matter, as well as spray paint, regular paint, letters, pastels, ink, pencils, drawing figures and a wooden poseable hand.
Above it all sits an Ellista print of a pink-themed Geisha, because she's an Australian artist I admire and like to support.

I grew up in a big house situated right next to the freeway. This meant I spent a lot of time indoors since it wasn't considered safe for me to venture outside with so many cars going 80ks. You can see this in the settings I created in Zombiism and Other Lies - there's a lot of large interiors and people are literally trapped inside them.
My mother, a baby boomer, enjoyed throwing many classy dinner parties, which I think ended up inspiring a lot of the bizarre rules the zombies adhere to in the name of polite society.

The Cat In The Hat Comes Back was the first story my father read to me. He re-read it every night for at least a years. The result was I tend to rhyme naturally when the mood strikes and sometimes get stuck in a mental loop of patterns similiar to rhyming.

Have an idea, let it sit for a while and see if it's still there some days and weeks later. Write down dot points for the story when I'm feeling creative. Flesh out potential points I missed or need (be it more dots or short paras, depending on how much I already know). Research. Write first draft, keeping to the dot points. Leave alone for ages. Re-read and make notes of every inconsistency and important moment. Go through and rewrite, fixing inconsistencies and fleshing out story some more. Leave alone. Go back and cut anything useless. Stitch together remains and send to a test reader. Fix what is suggested, go through and spellcheck everything. Send to reader again to check what you've spellchecked in case you're cutting out words accidentally.
Stop from redoing the entire book again, take a deep breath, and let it go.
Fret about errors you never noticed for weeks until you finally really do let it go.

Have multiple ideas. Test them with stock imagery and cut out the ones you dislike. Have a second round of ideas, and cut out ones you dislike. Send rest to a test audience. From there choose the final and refine many, many times.
Test it repeatedly when printing and on different screens so you know what problems can arise. Release.
Secretly still like the first idea but let it go anyway.

The Last Magin is my next main focus. An orphaned girl spends her days hunting down bandits when she stumbles across the last magic-wielder alive - a fourteen-year-old boy. Together they cross lands, defeating bandits and bartabs alike.
It is intended to be a Young Adult book with strong fantasy themes, and was originally a light romp but the second draft is transforming into something dark and deeply religious. It'll be interesting to see where it goes.
I'm also working on a script for a steampunk game with some friends in Norway, and contemplating another Zombie book.

If i have touched you with my words, then you have seen my mind and understood. That is the greatest gift of all: the connection of two minds. Words cannot describe what this means to me.