Top 3 Favorite Authors: What Makes a Good Author?

If you have been a dedicated reader of my blog, you must know that I have quite an eclectic taste for book genres. In the few weeks that my blog has been up, I have reviewed horror, love, adventure and am currently reading a non-fiction about understanding music. That's a pretty wide spread. With that being said, I would like to talk about a few of my favorite authors and what I feel makes a "good" author. 

Having the taste in books that I do obviously means that the range of authors will be pretty wide, as you will soon see. 

First, I want to start with Stephen King. Although in some of his book, I do have an issue with his writing style, for the most part I love reading his books. I am a huge horror fan, so of course he would be one of my favorite authors. His writing is detailed, yet to the point and that's what I like. I can picture exactly what he's talking about. My favorite Stephen King book is The Shining and it just so happens to be one of my favorite movies/TV series. Yes, there was a TV series and it was AWESOME!

Another of my favorite authors is Nicholas Sparks. As you can already see, I have gone to the opposite side of the spectrum. I am a sucker for love stories. Who doesn't want to be sucked into a love story where everything is perfect, but yet there is always the bad side? It makes the story more believable in a sense and even though Nicholas Sparks has the same outline in almost every book, I still love it every time. My favorite book from him has to be The Lucky One

Finally, Rhonda Byrne. I have a favorite series by her and for those of you who do not know what that is it is The Secret. The series has a great message and it has pushed me through a lot of bad times. I definitely recommend checking it out if you haven't already. 

In my personal opinion there are several things that go into being a good author. Number one being, you have to have a good message or story. Everyone knows that. If the story isn't there, there is no point in continuing to read (at least in my opinion). Number two is having a good writing style. If you have read any of my reviews, you realize that writing style is important to me and it effects my rating in the end. I do not want to read a book that has such an awful style that it's nearly unreadable. Good grammar, nice flow, sentence fluency, and consistency all play into a good writing style. Finally, a good following. Whether or not the author is new or old, if they have fans, there must be something about them that people like. Let me explain a little further. If an author has one book out and they have 5 fans, I want to check them out, even if they aren't really considered popular. Somebody finds something good about them and I want to know what that is. If an author has several books out and one million fans, I want to look into them too. 

What do you think makes a "good" author? Everyone has a different opinion and I want to hear it. Let me know some of your favorite authors and why you like them!