Favorite Authors

Do you have favorite authors? You notice I didn’t ask who your favorite author is, like it would be possible to name only one. At least, I couldn’t.

In high school my favorites were Rosemary Rogers and Kathleen Woodiwess. I read everything I could find by them. Once I was done, my reading slacked off.

Post high school: Stephen King. After reading “The Stand”, I had to read everything by him. I’ve just about done it, too.  He brought the joy of reading back in my life.

Then came Dean Koontz. I read “The Vision” waaaay back in the 70’s. I loved the book, but wasn’t hooked on reading at the time (in other words, it hadn’t consumed me yet). After I started reading more often (see Stephen King, above), I started looking for more of his work. My favorite of his is “Lightning”.

For many years, they were it. Life became busy (young mother, working full-time) and reading seemed out of the question. So it was okay that Stephen and Dean only came out with one or two books a year. I wasn’t in any hurry to get to the next one.

Then my daughter introduced me to Stephenie Meyer. I couldn’t read the Twilight books fast enough. I had borrowed the books from her and when I told her I wanted to re-read them, she promptly told me to get my own copies. I did.

I became a reading fiend. But where could I find more authors? Well, the internet is a good place to look, but by pure chance, I read an article by Stephen King (on his website) mentioning Meg Gardiner (a high school classmate of mine). Her books looked interesting and after reading the first one, I was hooked. Her books then led me to Tess Gerritsen (if Tess Gerritsen liked Meg's books, maybe I would like Tess’s and sure enough, I did), which led me to murderati.com and even more authors (and I’ve read most of their books – check them out, they’re good).

But Twilight still stuck with me. I wanted to read more love stories like that. So instead of looking, I decided to try and write my own. Now I’m a writing fiend and my reading has gone on the back-burner. Not too much, though. I still read every day during lunch and anytime I have free time. I am on my 35th book of the year (see sidebar on right), so I’m not slacking too much. But my pile of books to read has definitely grown. I can’t seem to stop buying them!

So who do you like?