Recently, a writer friend asked me who was my favorite author. Yikes! After a few moments stuttering, I managed to gasp out this list of authors whose books I read as soon as they come out:
Terry Pratchett
Laurell K. Hamilton
Lois McMaster Bujold
David Brin
and I think there was one more, whose name escapes me at the moment. Which points out the difficulty of the question.

Ah, yes. It was Neal Stephenson. Jotted down between Bujold and Brin.

[In another category, we have Neil Gaiman -- who I read _before_ his books come out, since I follow his web journal.]

There is no doubt these are excellent authors. At first glance, they don't have too much in common.

Terry Pratchett created Discworld, a flat planet of magic that reflects our own in wise and hilarious ways. With twenty-seven novels, plus maps, a cookbook, an illustrated book, plays and videos, Discworld is a bestselling multimedia phenomenon. It has none of the shallowness sometimes imputed to popular works. I laugh, and I think, and I look forward eagerly to the next one. Good places to start include Wyrd Sisters, Reaper Man and Guards! Guards!.

Terry Pratchett is perfectly acceptable for young adult readers, and he has written some for younger audiences -- Diggers from around 4th grade, Only You Can Save Mankind from around 6th grade. Laurell K. Hamilton, on the other hand, colors her books with death and sex. Her strong female leads live in worlds where vampires and werewolves or the sidhe coexist and cohabit with homo sapiens. The gore and the bed arrangements both work to press back previous limits in every book. This is strong adult material, visceral and anchored in riveting characters. The Anita Blake series begins with Guilty Pleasures and contains eleven books so far. There are two Merry Gentry books so far, A Kiss of Shadows and A Caress of Twilight. Most of the books fall into a mystery format, with relationship and political complications. These are page-turners, and Anita and Merry are people I want to know more about.

Lois McMaster Bujold's novels mostly fall into the Vorkosigan Saga. After two novels focusing on Cordelia, an astonishingly competent space captain caught in first an interstellar war, then a civil war, the following books trace the career of her son, Miles. Miles starts with unlimited ambition, a military education, and physical disabilities on a planet where those disabilities bring strong social stigma. Book by book, he builds first a career and then a life out of these materials. The earlier books are captivating adventures. Mirror Dance turns darker and more thoughtful. In Memory, he must reconsider his values. Komarr catches him in a mystery that turns nastily political. A Civil Campaign is a humorous romance with homages to Jane Austen.

In the interests of actually getting this on the web, I'm going to stop here and continue another day. After something of a lapse, I find myself voracious for fiction again. With luck, I'll post weekly here for the next few months.