John Steinbeck allowing Steinbeck to spend a full day on the set of "The Grapes of Wrath" and the next day on the set of "Of Mice and Men." In the 1930s and 1940s, Ed Ricketts strongly influenced Steinbeck's writing. Steinbeck frequently took small trips with Ricketts along the California coast to give himself time off from his writing and to collect biological specimens, which Ricketts sold for a living. Their joint book about a collecting expedition to the Gulf of California in 1940, which was part travelogue and part natural history, published just as the U.S. entered World War II, never
Christopher Moore (author) that as yet "none of them are in any danger of being made into a movie." Moore has named Kurt Vonnegut, Douglas Adams, John Steinbeck, Tom Robbins, Richard Brautigan, Robert Bloch, Richard Matheson, Jules Verne, Ray Bradbury, H. P. Lovecraft, Edgar Allan Poe and Ian Fleming as key influences on his writing. As of June 2006, Moore has been living in San Francisco, after a few years on the island of Kauai, Hawaii. Christopher Moore (author) Christopher Moore (born January 1, 1957) is an American writer of comic fantasy. He was born in Toledo, Ohio. He grew up in Mansfield,