William Gibson (Neuromancer; Burning Chrome; Count Zero; Idoru; Mona Lisa Overdrive; Virtual Light) (Gibson coined the term "cyberspace", by the way)
Neil Gaiman (Neverwhere; Stardust; American Gods; various The Sandman items)
Mark Leyner (Tooth Imprints on a Corn Dog; My Cousin, My Gastroenterologist; Et Tu, Babe)
Alan Dean Foster (Codgerspace; Cat A Lyst; Glory Lane)
Charles Dickens(Great Expectations; Oliver Twist; Tale of Two Cities; David Copperfield)
Mark Twain (Life on the Mississippi; The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; The Man who Corrupted Hadleyburg; The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn; Diary of Adam and Eve; On the Decay of the Art of Lying; Pudd'nhead Wilson)
Charlotte Bronte (Jane Eyre)
Nathaniel Hawthorne (The Scarlet Letter)
Douglas Adams (The Hitchikers Guide to the Galaxy; The Restaurant at the End of the Universe; Life, the Universe, and Everything; So long, and Thanks for all the Fish; Mostly Harmless; Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul; Prostitute in the Family Tree: Discovering Humor and Irony in the Bible)
So there it is. A list of a bunch of authors I like. I can't really say that much more for any of them - you'll have to go read their books. If you decide to read Leyner, try not to think too hard about any coherent plot and just focus on each paragraph individually. If you were wondering from the opening page, yes, I write. No, I'm not very good at it. Nothing I've ever written has been published or produced or whatever. My vignettes are ok (verging on bad, which I guess adds up to "mediocre"), and I have one short story that I think is good. Other than that, though, I tend to start big projects and never finish them. For example, I have three unfinished science fiction novels lying around, all of them terrible. None of them will be finished. I also have two scripts lying around, also unfinished. One is just a skeletal concept and the other is just a good idea excecuted badly that I need to totally overhaul. My crowning achievement in life so far, at least as work over thirty pages goes, is my kind-of-like-novel, which needs to have all the names in it changed, and which needs an entirely new ending. So my career as an author is what one could call less-than-exciting. But I do have some shorter work, as I said, that I'm pretty proud of. Ask me about it sometime, maybe you'll be lucky enough to recieve a copy of something (read: I will send you things until you scream at me). And if you want someone to read anything you've written, hey, I'm here for ya. But if you send me hard copy, don't be suprised if it comes back with notes in the margin about spelling and grammar (although I've been slipping lately). This website is no testament to my abilities as an editor, but when it comes to pen and ink, I am (or, anyway, was) a grammar god. And I look everything I think needs correcting up anyway, so I could be a chimp and still get it right. But I'm not a chimp. Honest..