BTT: Ground Floor

Booking Through Thursdays asks:
There’s something wonderful about getting in on the ground floor of an author’s career–about being one of the first people to read and admire them, before they became famous best-sellers. Which authors have you been lucky enough to discover at the very beginning of their careers? And, if you’ve never had that chance, which author do you WISH you’d been able to discover at the very beginning?

This one is so damn easy to answer! Peter V Brett! I received an ARC of The Painted Man through a book social networking site in Australia called Booktagger. I started reading it and I was immediately swept away by the characters and the plot. I used to read about 98% Epic Fantasy, but by the time I was 20 I was getting quite sick of the repetition – same characters, same plot, same feel to the world building. The Painted Man was so refreshing! It wasn’t a retelling of the classics, but something new. I received the ARC a long time before the book was released to the public, and then had to wait another year on top of that for The Desert Spear, but it was worth the wait! I still can’t afford to buy the novella Brayan’s Gold but I hope to soon. I love finding a promising author early. I love sharing the love. I passed it on to my brother, who has passed it on to his friend who passed it on to his girlfriend. It will be interesting to see how his career takes off. A lot of my friends have discovered him in the last year of so, and it is lovely when I meet other nerds and find out they have discovered his books and become fascinated with the demons rising from the core.

I met Peter at a signing at Galaxy last year and found out that apparently my ARC is quite rare and even he doesn't have a copy of it! It was printed locally in limited numbers or some such. Suffice to say, it now has a special place on my bookshelf  and I need to buy a new copy before I can justify reading it again!

I have been on the bandwagon early for other authors, but Peter V Brett is probably the earliest. Normally I discover an author after they have published a novel, not before it has been released! :D