Not sure about the first story, but an early one was "The Old Man and the Sea", by Ernest Hemingway. I loved Hemingway's direct prose and the struggle faced by the protagonist, Santiago. Maybe I also liked that it didn't end (spoiler alert) with "happily ever after".

I wanted the cover of my debut novel to be hard hitting and descriptive of the story. The background is the Philadelphia skyline (setting) and the foreground includes an important plot element.

The Hobbit (read it in one day home sick from school)
One Second After (shows how drastically things can change in an instant)
The Passage (Justin Cronin is super talented and knows how to tell a story)
The Mitch Rapp series (before Vince Flynn passed away)
The early Jack Reacher books (Lee Childs has a clean way of telling a story with a great protagonist)

Thrillers, Sci-Fi and sometimes...even a super hero book. No idea why on the last one. I also read some non-fiction. I am studying up on the crusades and the history of jihad for the next book I am going to write.

Kindle Paper White. Super easy to use.

Not sure yet. I'm still at the beginning of marketing my book.

Its a three sided work station. My laptop is for business transactions and my desktop (dual screen) is for writing... and maybe some YouTube and Netflix breaks.

I grew up in Columbia, Maryland. I am not sure it influenced my first book. That is based on my almost daily forays into the toughest neighborhoods in Philadelphia for my previous job (Security and Fire Alarm systems).

I've always enjoyed writing. I am trained as an engineer. The stereotype for an engineer is someone who can't write. At my first job out of college, I found myself writing a large number of complex reports and I enjoyed it. Also, I have always enjoyed stories and I relate to other best by telling and hearing stories.

I am convinced there is a day of reckoning coming where American cities are going to have to face some unprecedented tough financial and social choices. Think Detroit on steroids. So I took that theme, amplified it ten times, mixed in an evil antagonist, and whipped up a story that will entertain, shock, and educate you.

Necessity. I submitted to eighteen agents and got rejected or no response from all of them. So I decided to go it independently. I love the web based resources to allow me to do this. My hope is that I get just one email from a reader telling me how angry they are with me because they are falling asleep at work the night after they couldn't put my book down to get a full night's sleep. Getting a hundred of such emails would be great!