Howard Frank Mosher, who is one of the best and most accessible contemporary novelists, has a blog: The Kingdom Journal. He's not prolific, but it's well worth reading.
In his post about spring reading, he mentions the author Tim Gautreaux, a Louisiana writer of short stories and novels. I picked up a copy of Gautreaux's novel The Clearing, and I can see why Howard Frank Mosher likes him so much: he's a fantastic writer and storyteller who evokes the atmosphere of a bayou logging camp in the 1920s with a fine touch.
