If you enjoy my work, I can recommend several things that have inspired me. Terry Pratchett gave me a lot of my views on human nature, anthropomorphic representations, gods, and heroes, and is 100% worth reading on any given day. If you want a good place to start, you can do it where I did it, with Guards! Guards!

Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files have inspired a lot of love in me for modern fantasy, and the blending of worlds; If you’ve tried the Dresden Files before and had trouble getting into them, there’s no harm in starting with book #3, Grave Peril. He’s a goofy nerdy bastard, but so am I, so you should enjoy him.

Brandon Sanderson has always done quite a lot for me, though he’s not everyone’s cup of tea; He inspires me with the way he writes powers, though, which is second to few, and worth exploring. The Mistborn series is always a good place to start with things.

And of course, there’s always Neil Gaiman if you’ve got nothing else worth doing ;D

For free online material, there’s three in particular I’d recommend.

http://www.faans.com/ can make you cringe sometimes with how goddamn nerdy it is, but it’s also made me feel moments of absolutely pure elation, and I’d say one of those is worth any amount of cringe. http://www.schlockmercenary.com/ is a webcomic I’ve been reading since 2001, and it has never missed a day, which is amazing, and it has managed to be a fascinating space opera, which is even better.

And last, but not least, there’s wildbow; https://parahumans.wordpress.com/ Worm is his first work, and is a really world class piece of writing, particularly for its nature as something speedwritten and posted immediately. His second novel, Pact, finished a year or two ago, and is also superb; If you check topwebfiction, all three of his pieces consistently hit the high points there, and he’s got a great sense of power, story arcs, and style. His themes between Worm and Pact have some obvious parallels, but they’re damn good themes.