Author Appreciation Week (days 1 and 2)

As I'm sure you all know by now (especially if you follow a lot of blogs) it's Author Appreciation Week! This idea was originally thought up by the very lovely and hilarious Heidi R. Kling. The idea is to blog each day this week about an author you love and explain why you love them. The more astute among you will notice that I've missed a day (oops) but this is because I've had a rough week at work and have not had time for anything else. In order to prove my point, let me just say that the laundry basket is full and the kitchen resembles something akin to a bomb site! So now I have to do TWO posts today to make up for missing yesterday.

Yesterday's author was going to be Stephenie Meyer. For the simple reason that "Twilight" got me back into reading YA fiction. I devoured all of Stephenie's books in a weekend and loved them. I have to be honest and say I haven't finished "The Host" yet as I had some difficulty getting into it (and how the hell are they going to make this into a movie?!)

Stephenie may be slated by some, but *I* enjoy her writing and no one can deny the success of The Twilight Saga.

My second Author has to be the most awesome, rock star of author's Maggie Stiefvater. It's no secret that she is my favourite YA author and I love her to death (in a totally non stalker kind of way). She is intelligent, witty and UBER talented (dear God, is it REALLY fair to make one person so multitalented? huh?) I have all of her books (yes, including Linger *squeeeeeeee*).

When I was finished reading "The Twilight Saga" I was really stuck for something else to read that would live up to how much I loved Twilight. I kept hearing on the grapevine about a little book called "Shiver" and how good it was. I was going to order it online but then I saw it in a bookshop and immediately bought it (even though it was more expensive) because I was desperate to read it and see what all the fuss was about. Well, I was blown away by it. The funny coincidental thing was, before I read Shiver, I was thinking that it would be good to see a book with one chapter by the girl then the next chapter by the boy and so on. That's pretty much how Shiver is....funny huh?! Shiver is an amazing book and I ended up in tears at the end. I then looked for information about Maggie and found her on facebook and Twitter. I bought her other books and read Lament, my first faery book :) I know what you're thinking, "if you love her so much, how come you haven't written any reviews on her books?" Well, the answer is simple. I want to re-read them so my reviews can be fresh. I'm currently in the middle of re-reading Shiver so I can FINALLY get started on Linger. Then, I'll re-read Lament and Ballad.

Maggie's writing has also encouraged ME to write and I wrote my first short story for about 15 years. I've also entered a writing contest and plan to write a book in the near future (an ACTUAL book people). I also met my best book pal through our love of Maggie's writing and we started a book club together :)

Maggie is part of the Merry Sisters of Fate which consists of three writers: Maggie, the very lovely Tessa Gratton ("Blood Magic") and Brenna Yovanoff ("The Replacement"). They write short stories for our enjoyment and have published an anthology with some of the best ones included. Maggie's blog is always suitably entertaining and she also blogs about becoming a writer, giving advice and tips on the matter.

What I love most about Maggie (besides everything I've just mentioned) is just how accessible she is to her fans. She will acknowledge every comment, every e mail, every nod in her direction. And all this on top of her regular writing work. I really don't know where she finds the time but I'd like to say THANK YOU to her for this, it means a lot to us muggles out here :)

I'm going to stop gushing now, especially as Heidi R. Kling has written a fantastic post about Maggie this week (how can I ever compete?!). I just want to say that if you haven't discovered Maggie Stiefvater yet, what on earth are you waiting for?! GO NOW! FIND HER BOOKS AND READ THEM!