Tell your readers what is it about “an” author that you are most passionate about, that have you coming back for more from them, following their every blog post – literally blackmailing people to read their books?

Who are some of your all time favourite authors?

And what is it about them that makes you keep going back for more?

I have, I think, my favourite books pretty well down pat. But favourite authors? I don’t think there are actually that many authors whose entire output I have read. There are many whose work I’ve read a substantial portion thereof, but can you really peg someone as a favourite author when you haven’t read every word they have cast into the public domain? Margaret Atwood, for instance. I’ve read 10 of her novels and short story collections. That’s quite a lot to read by any author. Except she’s written over 20 novels and short story collections, and that’s before we get to her poetry, non-fiction, and children’s books. Can she really be a true favourite? I tend to count her as one, but am I jumping the gun? I’m not sure.

For safety’s sake, then, I’ve chosen to blog about Sarah Waters. She has written five novels, and I’ve read all of them. Why do I like her writing so much?

Reason #1: What attracted me to her first three novels was their Victorian setting. Specifically, none of them were focussed on “mainstream” lives, rather there was a sort of underground element to them all. Tipping the Velvet was set amongst the music halls, the backstreets, the queer, and finally the socialist movements of Victorian London. Affinity featured prisons and spiritualism. Fingersmith had slum dwellers, thieves, and rich collectors of erotic books. They were none of them about ladies going visiting at regular hours, and that appealed to me. Her two most recent novels, The Night Watch and The Little Stranger, are set in the 1940s, but by that time I was hooked on her writing, regardless of time-setting.

Reason #2: Her characters. As I have mentioned about a bazillion times before, my favourite books are character-driven. If I don’t believe in the person I’m reading about, then I might as well just put the book down and forget about it (the exception to this is my guilty penchant for trashy, gory crime novels). Sarah Waters can do characters. From Nancy and Kitty in Tipping the Velvet to Dr Faraday and Caroline in The Little Stranger, I remember all of them more clearly, sometimes, than I remember the actual plots. That’s a good sign in my book, though I grant it might not be in everyone else’s.

Reason #3: When I said that I remember the characters better than I remember the plots, that doesn’t mean that I’ve forgotten all the plots. Far from it, and this is reason the third. Sometimes in literary fiction it feels like the plot is the last thing on the author’s mind, behind crafting language and the intricate placing of the semi-colon. I’m not saying that’s necessarily wrong, I’m all for beautiful language, but a story would be nice too please. Sarah Waters writes beautifully, but she also writes bloody good stories. The twist in Fingersmith! The ambiguous ending of The Little Stranger! The backward narrative arcs of The Night Watch! All good stuff.

For me, Sarah Waters does it all: great settings, authentic historical detail, brilliantly drawn characters, and cracking stories to boot. What more could you want?

These are the things that have me “going back for more” in any author, though characters are the main thing for me. Margaret Atwood does great characters with the added bonus of salient political/feminist points in much of her work. Ali Smith has the poetic style that I know alienates some readers, but consistently has me going back to her. Jonathan Coe, again, does great characters and is genuinely funny. In the realms of the Victorian novel, again, I like big stories (Dickens, Wilkie Collins) and political fiction (the New Women writers) and really great characters, especially the women.

Last night I started reading Rupture by Simon Lelic, which I won in kimbofo’s recent giveaway, and I got half way through in one sitting. I’m thoroughly enjoying it (I’m not sure, as Kim said, that “enjoy” is necessarily the word for this very dark novel, but you take my point) and that is again down to the factors above. But more of that novel when I’ve finished it, which at this rate, won’t be long at all.

Today’s Weekly Geeks challenge is about author fun facts.

1. Choose a writer you like.
2. Using resources such as Wikipedia, the author’s website, whatever you can find, make a list of interesting facts about the author.
3. Post your fun facts list in your blog, maybe with a photo of the writer, a collage of his or her books, whatever you want.
4. Come sign the Mr Linky below with the url to your fun facts post.
5. As you run into (or deliberately seek out) other Weekly Geeks’ lists, add links to your post for authors you like or authors you think your readers are interested in.

I’ve chosen Michel Faber, the author of my favourite contemporary novel The Crimson Petal and the White.

Fun Fact #1: He was born in The Netherlands, emigrated to Australia as a child, but moved to Scotland in 1993. In Scotland he is considered a Scottish author (or at least Scottish by formation) while in Australia he is considered an Australian novelist thanks to the long period of time he lived there.

Fun Fact #2: Since 1996 he has won the following prizes/awards: Ian St James Award, Macallan/Scotland on Sunday Short Story Competition, Neil Gunn Prize, Saltire Society Scottish First Book of the Year Award, Whitbread First Novel Award.

Fun Fact #3: In 2001, when the publication of The Crimson Petal and the White was imminent, Canongate urged Faber to become a UK citizen so that the book could be submitted for the Booker Prize, which was at that time open only to authors holding Commonwealth passports. Faber declined, as he did not wish to become British at a time when the British government was preparing to follow the USA into war on Afghanistan and Iraq.

Fun Fact #4: According to one interview, it was Faber’s wife who encouraged his writing, even offering “to put stamps on the envelopes and to take care of all the messy procedures of submitting work.”

Fun Fact #5: When asked about what music he was listening to when he wrote The Crimson Petal and the White, he said that the novel was “probably the first Victorian novel that was written to a constant background of Krautrock and Jazz fusion.”

Fun Fact #6: In 2009, he donated the short story Walking After Midnight to Oxfam’s ‘Ox-Tales’ project, four collections of UK stories written by 38 authors. His story was published in the ‘Water’ collection.

Fun Fact #7: The manuscript for Crimson Petal was about 300,000 words.

So there you go. You should definitely read his work (did I mention how much I LOVE Crimson Petal? It bears repeating). For all his critical acclaim he still seems to be somehow under the radar. One of the things I love about his books – I’ve read most of them – is that they are so different. I would never have guessed that Under the Skin and Crimson Petal were written by the same author, and I think that’s a marvellous skill for a writer to possess.