Ok, this may sound trivial, but I’ve just discovered that my favourite living fantasy author, Steven Brust, reads Order of the Stick and gets distracted when Rich Burlew doesn’t update it promptly.
That’s cool!
Also cool is that he plays Neverwinter Nights, and that hewrites cool books. (Cool books being ones I really enjoy reading; see Brust’s Theory of Coolness).
Favourite dead author? Roger Zelazny, and I rather think Steven Brust might agree with me there. Or at least be close.