Favorite: Authors

Turns out, the best part about having a blog is the ability to talk about literally anything you want. If someone wants to read your rambling, so much the better. Even if they don't, it's a weird little diary of your thoughts at a particular time in your life. Weird, but fun.

What this means for me, then, is that I get to gush about my favorite things for no reason whatsoever. And if you're curious: great! Read on. If not, click off and go enjoy other things. I shall now begin with a list of my favorite authors. (Quick note: underlined names mean that I've linked their official website; those without mean I did not find an official website for them.)

Authors

Ilona Andrews

As of this moment, the husband/wife writing duo is my #1. They might always be number one and I'm okay with that. For those of you unfamiliar with them, please check out their site and their work. They write everything from Urban Fantasy, Sci-Fi, and portal fantasy. Their romantic couples are full of snark, heavy banter, and a deep, abiding respect for one another. Every person that comes onto the page feels authentic and real. Their plots are fast-paced with plenty of action and emotion. I love everything I've read of theirs, and that's difficult to say about most authors.

Robert Jordan

Robert Jordan is a master of complexity. Whether it be in the storyline, character dynamics, or cultural differences, this man's greatest strength is in his world building. When you pick up his books, you are immediately drawn into a world vastly different from your own. Once there, you are completely immersed. And when it's time to set the book aside, you have to take a moment to reorient yourself, because that's not your world and those aren't your problems. For that, he will always be a source of inspiration to me.

Robin McKinley

Sometimes, I think I auto-buy Robin McKinley's work for the simple sake of nostalgia. Then I do a reread and fall in love all over again. When I was a teenager, I was gifted a box set of three of her novels and became immediately entranced. Heavily wrapped up in fairytale retellings, much of her work has that strange, almost mystical quality to it as the story unfolds. This is easiest to see in Beauty, Chalice, and Spindle's End, but floats in and out of some of her other works. What I really enjoy about her is the inconsistency. What I mean by that is: she writes what she wants to write, regardless of expectations. What she was first known for was fairytale retellings. She then jumped into fantasies of her own, before coming in with some urban fantasies. And she did all of these projects justice. That said, I do recommend doing your research before picking up some of her books. Deerskin, for example, is the heaviest and has some of the darkest moments of human nature. Due diligence is a must with this author. She does not shy away from hard topics. Nor does she drown you with the dark and dirty all the time.

Kate Morton

When I pick up a Kate Morton book, I know what I'm getting into. There will be lucious prose, a deeply disturbing mystery in a past setting, and a tenacious main character trying to root out the truth. This isn't the kind of author where you expect sudden twists and turns or rough treatment. She is a person who sets out to write mysteries with intense personal entanglements and she does it beautifully. Considering I don't do more than dip my toes into the genres of mystery, historical fiction, or contemporary fiction, the fact that this woman can blend all three together and make me love everything about it... Well, she's on my auto-buy list, and that's about as high a compliment as I can give.

Anne McCaffrey

Even if this one is pure nostalgia, you can pry my Dragonriders of Pern books from my cold dead hands. That said, Anne McCaffrey was probably one of the most prolific writers of her generation, and the multi-genre series she's developed are a testament to her level of creativity. Having begun reading the Pern books in middle school, I don't think I realized just how much her ability to give her characters such complex ranges of emotion sank into my subconscious. The fact that she took a core series and expanded it into over twenty books over a vast timeline and multiple characters is such an achievement. I've learned so much from her writing and am now itching to do another reread.

And that's the list. At least for now. While there are literally hundreds of other authors whose workd I enjoy, there aren't many that fill me with intense jealousy. These people do that. They are the people that I aspire to be like, which is what makes them favorites of mine. Or, y'know, I just enjoy the hell out of their work. Which is honestly a good enough answer for why someone/thing is your favorite anyway.

To be honest, when I first started writing this blog post, it was going to be a whole list of my favorites, but when you start adding reasons to each of those points, it gets quite lengthy. For the sake of pacing, I decided to break them up. (Which is also great because I can now schedule them out and have more to post and less to write in the long run.)

So, that's that, and look for the next one which is, unsurprisingly, my favorite books and series.