Building the perfect Franken-author

If you could choose different aspects of famous writers, who would you use to construct your ideal writer (ie, plotting from James Patterson, characters from Carl Hiaasen, setting from Charles Dickens, etc)?

by Meredith Cole

It sounds like a diabolical experiment: building the perfect author. And kind of funny, too. I can't even imagine what a Patterson/Hiassen/Dickens writer might sound like. But I think the combo author would lose the unique flavor of each writer as they were added to the mix, and that would be a shame.

Here's what I do know:

I would love to write mysteries as funny as Timothy Hallinan's Junior Bender series.

I'd love to be able to write beautiful descriptions like Reed Farrel Coleman.

I would love to write a painful coming of age mystery story like William Kent Krueger.

I would love to be able to write fight scenes like Lee Child.

I would like to be able to write a complex politically charged mystery like Sara Paretsky.

I would love to write a well researched historical mystery like Anne Perry.

And I could go on and on... Because I am both a reader and a writer.

And for a very funny post by a very funny author, see Lawrence Block's "author merger" piece from last week. If authors were corporations...