John Wiswell

About Me

"He's just this guy, you know?"

Published at:

-Flashshots
-Blink Inc.
-Every Day Fiction
-Short-Story.Me
-Alienskin Magazine
-Flash Fiction Online (April 2010)
-10Flash (Pending Pub Date)
-Untied Shoelaces of the Mind (Pending Pub Date)
-Weird Tales (Pending Pub Date)

Why do you write?

My mind. It's been years since I needed outside help for ideas, barring that you always have outside help in the form of every experience you have. I think and ideas happen as a result. Why I continue writing? Because I've put far too much time into this already and if I quit, boy I'll look silly.

Any favorite authors? Books?

When I was thirteen, I was crippled by a rare reaction to steroids. I was bedridden for a year, and have been in constant pain ever since. That year was the hardest. In that year, the works of Stephen King, Mark Twain, J.R.R. Tolkien, Homer, John Grisham and Michael Crichton gave me the will to make it from one hour to the next, to read or hear (by audiobook) what happened next. No one can be so influential as those writers who gave me the will to live. Since then I've been highly influenced by Jonathan Swift, Douglas Adams and G.K. Chesterton's senses of humor, Eudora Welty and Roger Zelazny's astounding variety in short fiction, and the audacity and scope in John Steinbeck and Dante Alighieri. Dante Alighieri was the worst influence on me because he never minded making the poem a little longer to make another point, and that made me think I should be able to do that. King, Twain, Tolkien and Homer remain favorite authors along with the new ones.