It was 'Through the garden gate,' a "Janet and John" childrens book. I was at kinder-garden and suddenly during playtime reading clicked with me. I could finally do it, slowly at first but with exhilaration and amazing acceleration once through the learning wall. I read the whole book by myself several times and reading has been one of my favourite occupations ever since. My Dad said you can learn how to do anything from books and he was pretty much right.

Several I suppose. I'm a reader first and a writer second, and I like adventure novels that include romance and graphic sexual description. Like my Dad said, you can learn anything from books. What I learnt was that the whole business doesn't work unless both (or all) parties are having fun. My otherwise liberal Grandmother was a bit sniffy about the sexual scenes in Wilbur Smith's first novel "When the Lion Feeds," but aged sixteen I found them electrifying on several levels. There was eroticism, uncontrollable passion, guilt, anticipation, gratification and manipulation in just a few paragraphs. Love and sexual relationships trump greed and ambition as the prime human motivators every time. Wilbur Smith, Harold Robbins, Tony Park and Jilly Cooper all write sexual intercourse scenes graphically and well whereas John Grisham doesn't really include any sexual content but the most chaste, yet they are all fantastic Authors. Just personal preference from both a reading and writing perspective I suppose.

Yes. "Try not to do anything stupid today." It is so easy when driving a truck, writing a control program, flying an aircraft or doing anything else really, to make a stupid error that ruins your day. Reminding myself of that often helps. But not all the time. It's a bugger, only being human.

Mainly adventure fiction. In many cases good fiction can inform and make facts more enjoyable and easier to assimilate than the raw data. A good example is writing about the Great War. Most history books are pretty dry but fiction like "The Regeneration Trilogy" by Pat Barker really brings the tragedy of war shockingly to life. Incidentally her novels include some sexual content, including homosexual love scenes which have traditionally been a bit taboo but these are crafted brilliantly. It happens, so why not write about it?

There are many.
"I was born with nothing and I've still got most of it left" is one favourite.
Another is from Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare; "There is a tide in the affairs of men, Which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune. Omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and in miseries." Brutus is talking about opportunity, but taking opportunity does not always lead on to fortune as I, like Brutus, have sometimes discovered.
Shakespeare was so brilliant at writing stories where characters are presented with choices and get sucked into appalling situations by misinterpreting them. Mark Anthony's speech after Caesar was killed has got to be one of the greatest pieces of writing of all time.

Grubbing for a living mainly. in my case writing hasn't yet proved to be "the flood which leads on to fortune" from Shakespeare's quote. I'm a contract System Control Engineer some of the time and a Class-one truck driver some of the time. Both give great flexibility when I need long periods of time off. I often go to Canada mountaineering, skiing and flying and of course writing. I'm not sorry I got onto the writing treadmill. It provides a sense of achievement, as does reaching the summit of a mountain. There's nothing quite like a sense of achievement to keep you getting out of bed. Life should be more about doing things than having things.

I use an Android tablet at present but I'm waiting for something like a Kindle paper-white that has a long battery-life but that you can write on too. During long-distance travel and on mountaineering trips based in remote huts or camping I borrow a Kindle from one of our daughters because otherwise I would have to carry 3 or more paperbacks which is a pain. The tablet would run out of battery on the first day.

Difficult Question, there are so many that I love. Enid Blyton and Richmal Compton as an early reader. Wilbur Smith, Stuart Cloete, Herman Charles Bosman, Robert Ruark, James A Michener, Harold Robbins, Tony Park, Jilly Cooper, David Caute, Tom Sharpe, Stephen Leather, Clare Francis, Larry McMurtry, Barbara Bradford Taylor, ... I could go on for hours. No slight intended to those I haven't listed. The common thread is that all their story-lines and characters ring true with very seldom a "bum note." I've never been very keen on Authors of the "one bound and he was free" genre. I try to make my own stories and characters consistently plausible, even when extraordinary situations present themselves.

Word of mouth more often than not. Tony Park recently had all his books on a special on Amazon and I bought the lot after a friend mentioned having enjoyed them. The "other people bought" lists often help me discover new Authors and Titles too.