I read across the board. I'm started with fantasy, which progressed to Graphic novels and SF, so favourite authors in those could be from Iain M.Banks (world-building and subtlety) to Alan Moore, Joe hill to Asimov (old school, whilst I don't feel comfortable with his old fashioned views on women, I loved his world-building robotics theories). This sounds bad, but I read what I can get my hands on, Austria isn't English Language Book capital of the world, so I read what hits the top ten boards in local bookstores, or what interests me from twitter feeds or off Amazon. I tend to do authors - get all their books and devour them, but at the moment I'm so busy critting on scribophile (I do about 50 crits a week)and other sites that I am reading more unpublished works than published!

I bought King's last novel - the institute, and it was ok. Reading Robert Harris' The second sleep presently, recommended by King.

As my novel started out as a Graphic novel, I also try to keep abreast of that field, but I don't have the time I used to have.

@austrianspencer Very interesting. I know some English-writing authors of various genres have begun advertising books via the German Amazon site, but I don't know what kind of success they've had.

@Matt Generally you can buy any book available on Amazon. com on Amazon.de, the german site (Austria is too small to have it's own domain, they shio from Germany). There are thousands of English speaking natives here, and most buy ebooks, it is instant download. I buy books because I like a book in my hand now and then. Genre isn't an issue. Neither is availability. English language books selling in foreign language countries is all down to marketing, as I'm sure you're aware. I don't think Genre would really stop me from buying a book if I felt interested in the premise, but this is coming from a critter - I read across genres because people ask me to.

I'm the same way! All my ideas tend toward horror but I can't read or watch very much of it, with a few exceptions.

Is it historical fiction, or is it memoir, Tom?

@Litgal , is there a convention or rule that designates when something might become "historical fiction"? Does it need to be more than a century ago, or more?

@Matt Yes the basis of Prelude is my own experience, but fictionally it is much more than that.

What I witnessed, or rather what I was shown was set of then classified standing orders for designating riflemen to shoot American Civilians if they tried to enter Ft. Ord. A protest had been hurriedly assembled after Kent State on a day that had been traditionally a day of open access. Instead it had become a day of war protest. The fiction part, which I think I base on pretty strong evidence, is the motivation of the command for showing me and many other young men who might be opposed to the war, those orders. There is also a love triangle that I did not personally enjoy that is used to further illustrate the cultural strains of the time. In the current draft the opening scene is the protagonist's rejection of a young woman's romantic overatures because he knows he's going to war.

I've had a lot of fun identifying specific landmarks that were new then and very different from what they are now. For years I thought I had been something of an unsung hero because my sister's boyfriend was on the steering committee for the protest at the nearby University. In retrospect I have come to believe that the motivation of command was anti demonstration propaganda which appeared to work since none of the thousands protested attempted to enter the Fort. I believe that this and other military acts at the time had unintended consequences that still haunt us today. That demonstration only happened because the military was unwilling to talk with the students. Their intention (clearly delineated in a student thesis I found at the University was a so called teach in. Had the base commander and others like him collaborated with them we might have had very different results. Even today, soldiers are suspicious of civilian opinion and vice versa. For the most part my experience is merely data for the history. What happens to my characters is only in a small way a mirror of what happened to me. It's a novel, and I'm old enough I think it qualifies as historic.