Caroline Peckham and Susanne Valenti. I would love to pick their brains and find out exactly what their process is and how they write so emotionally that it destroys readers, yet has them coming back for more and more and more. Then probably Keanu Reeves. He'd be cool to hang out with and i bet the twisted sisters would love him too!
Character and voice. They go together, obviously, but I've found in my reading that I can skim through setting descriptions and action sequences to get to those juicy scenes where characters are hashing things out or sharing emotions. There is so much to be said about good writing if readers could take all the dialogue tags away and still know which character is speaking. In my writing, i find that I'm not happy with what's on the pages until I feel like I've fleshed a character out fully and given them their own voice.
