I've been reading since I was in grade school, but I didn't pick up a serious book until about age 16 when I discovered my first Dragonlance book in the War of Souls trilogy. Good read, but because I had no idea what was going on or who any of the characters were, it inspired me to go backward and then a school friend introduced me to forgotten realms, specifically Drizzt Do'Urden. From then I moved on to other genres in college when I discovered A Song of Ice and Fire and the thrillers by Vince Flynn and Dan Brown. A former work supervisor introduced me to Jim Butcher and another coworker Suzanne Collins. In short, I love to read.
It probably goes without saying that even with a diverse portfolio of books under my belt, I've always dabbled in the genre of fantasy with my writing. I didn't seriously start writing until my sophomore year of college when a project for my creative writing class interested me enough to continue working on it and became a full blown manuscript.