If you haven't read anything by Tanya Huff, start now. Her Blood books are decent vampire/supernatural fic with an awesome female protagonist and complicated, adult relationships, plus the vampire bastard son of Henry VIII. The TV series isn't exactly great TV, but it's got HEAPS of pretty. Also, Dylan Neal, who played Dave Sheppard.
The Smoke trilogy picks up with one of the minor characters from the Blood series--who is gay and out and works on the set of a low-budget vampire detective TV show. Huff knows fandom, and so there are lots of fannish references, like the fact that everyone slashes the two leads on the show. Sadly but not surprisingly, they didn't sell well, so it's going to remain a trilogy.
Her Confederation series is completely different. It's military SF, but don't let that dissuade you--I normally avoid that genre like the plague, but I loved it. Her protagonist is an awesome human female noncom in the Space Marines, and not only is she interesting, but so are all of the aliens and the political structure she sets up.
What else...There's the Eric Flint (and lots of other people) Ring of Fire series, mostly the 163X books. The premise is that a West Virginia mining town gets picked up, transported through time and space, and ends up in Germany in the middle of the 30 Years' War. Flint has Political Opinions, and he Shows You Them, but he mostly manages to avoid being completely anvilicious. One of the neat things about him is that he's all about the free flow of information--he started the Baen Free Library years ago, on the theory that the best way to prevent piracy was to give books away. You can get most of his stuff at http://www.baen.com but the trick is that you can usually only get the first couple of books in a series. Then you're hooked. :) Unlike certain other authors who've been recced here, he believes fanfic can be a good thing, and he's involved in putting out the compilations of fanfic in the 163X-verse.
And if you've missed Lois McMaster Bujold, then the only thing I can tell you is to start with Cordelia's Honor and read the Vorkosigan series through A Civil Campaign (the most recent one was, IMO, not all that good). Then read Curse of Chalion and Paladin of Souls, and then read all of the Sharing Knife series. The latter is a mix of fantasy and straight-out romance, but the characters are engaging and it's an interesting world.
C.S. Friedman also has a new series--the first book is Feast of Souls. telesilla loved it; me, not so much, but she has a higher tolerance for a complete lack of sympathetic characters than I do.
no subject
The Smoke trilogy picks up with one of the minor characters from the Blood series--who is gay and out and works on the set of a low-budget vampire detective TV show. Huff knows fandom, and so there are lots of fannish references, like the fact that everyone slashes the two leads on the show. Sadly but not surprisingly, they didn't sell well, so it's going to remain a trilogy.
Her Confederation series is completely different. It's military SF, but don't let that dissuade you--I normally avoid that genre like the plague, but I loved it. Her protagonist is an awesome human female noncom in the Space Marines, and not only is she interesting, but so are all of the aliens and the political structure she sets up.
What else...There's the Eric Flint (and lots of other people) Ring of Fire series, mostly the 163X books. The premise is that a West Virginia mining town gets picked up, transported through time and space, and ends up in Germany in the middle of the 30 Years' War. Flint has Political Opinions, and he Shows You Them, but he mostly manages to avoid being completely anvilicious. One of the neat things about him is that he's all about the free flow of information--he started the Baen Free Library years ago, on the theory that the best way to prevent piracy was to give books away. You can get most of his stuff at http://www.baen.com but the trick is that you can usually only get the first couple of books in a series. Then you're hooked. :) Unlike certain other authors who've been recced here, he believes fanfic can be a good thing, and he's involved in putting out the compilations of fanfic in the 163X-verse.
And if you've missed Lois McMaster Bujold, then the only thing I can tell you is to start with Cordelia's Honor and read the Vorkosigan series through A Civil Campaign (the most recent one was, IMO, not all that good). Then read Curse of Chalion and Paladin of Souls, and then read all of the Sharing Knife series. The latter is a mix of fantasy and straight-out romance, but the characters are engaging and it's an interesting world.
C.S. Friedman also has a new series--the first book is Feast of Souls.