DEMIGODDESSES
In no particular order
Hth -- I'm going to be recommending like six of her stories individually, but let me just say that because of her page I not only saw Hard Core Logo for the first time (I might've gotten around to it eventually anyway, but who knows how long it would've taken), but have actually begun to wish I could start watching Due South. In addition to her fic, I am also just blown away by her essays and various posts to newsgroups. It's rare that I find someone whose powers of self-expression I actually envy to this extent.
Elizabeth is such an amazing writer that she manages to make Roswell seem like great television, and I wish she were actually writing it because if she were it would be a really good show, which (much as I dig watching it anyway) sadly hasn’t ever been the case to date. I discovered Elizabeth after loving a couple of her stories on the Crashdown AfterHours and Slightly Left of Venus sites and reading anything else with her name on it until I realized I'd never seen a bad story by her. Some are better than others, but when someone can write about a Dawson's Creek spinoff and make it readable, that's just talent. Even if you don't care for teen angst, when Elizabeth writes about it, it can be a thing of beauty.
Jane St. Clair, among her other enviable writing abilities, has the ability to write both canon/OTPs and slash/UC equally well. As with Heather, I’ll be recommending a bunch of her stories in their individual fandoms, but for now let me just say that if she were to just write a Buffy/Faith story my life would be complete (well, not totally complete, because there’s still Forever Knight, Blake’s 7, Deep Space 9…but anyway). Read her now.
Francesca -- Having never been in the Sentinel fandom, I had no idea who Francesca was when I met her at a con, but she made enough of an impression on me (even before I mentioned liking Speranza's Due South stuff and having everyone at the table look at me and being like, what? I've read like three Due South stories ever, people) that I finally gave up my usual resistance to reading in yet another new fandom for which I haven't seen the show. And then I read this paragraph and that was it for me:
Neither Jim nor Blair were sexually inexperienced, but the urgency of the situation, the intensity of their feelings, quickly sent sophistication scurrying out to check up on rational thought as they scrabbled at each other awkwardly, wanting to touch, feel, explore as much of each other as possible while keeping their mouths pressed together. Jim excitedly registered that this felt like the first time--like all the first times rolled into one and magnified by a hundred--the first kiss, the first touch, the first terrifying nakedness, and he suddenly, physically, remembered the trembling astonishment that such things were possible, the sheer exhilaration of it, the drunken feeling of one's own incredible boldness in touching, in allowing oneself to be touched, in secret places, private places--the rumbling, shuddering crash of barriers falling, of boundaries crossed, of taboos smashed between one's self and another, the exquisite, torturous vulnerability that co-existed hopelessly with giddy, adolescent arrogance because someone--some wonderful someone--was going to let you get away with it!--when sex was still something you got away with, a snatched, fleeting joy, an explosive "HOORAY!" before you got older and practiced and so damn mature about it, before it became a well-choreographed dance, the expected last act of a stale comedy, something to be handled with savoir faire and adult sophistication--"top or bottom?"--an exercise, an expectation, a performance to which your adult life entitled you and which was never half as good, never a fraction as good, as that stolen kiss under the bleachers or that first grope in your girlfriend's basement or that first blow job in that cheap motel on a weekend pass, where the delirious passion of the moment was tempered by the fear that perhaps one wasn't experienced enough, sophisticated enough, that perhaps you weren't good enough looking or your cock wasn't big enough--but you were and you were and you were and it was and wow. Holy fucking wow, and Jim had thought that nothing would ever be so good again--but here he was, doing that frantic, graceless dance with Blair Sandburg, and he was young again, and he felt Blair awkwardly grasping his cock and he pushed himself ineptly into Blair's hand as Blair humped his hip like a teenager and covered his face with clumsy, heartfelt kisses, and Jim knew that this was going to be rough and quick and messy and he thought that was just fine.
Thomas -- Thomas is the author who got me into slash (see the Blake's 7 page for the full story if you're interested), and since I've rec'd most of her stories on individual fandom pages, the only things on her site I haven't already linked to are her Professionals stories, but that's okay--I'd never read any Pros before either, and I still dug them.
Alara Rogers -- I think I fell for Alara when I realized that she was the one person more obsessed with Magneto (and earlier, Q, although I never even came close there) than I was, in my mid-teens--and I mean that as a compliment. Not only does she write solid fan fiction with both character development and plot, she runs a collection of text-only sites/archives indispensable to anyone who loves a good villain. And I'm very happy that she's now discovered Farscape....
Kate Bolin -- Speaking of archives, I'm recommending Kate as an archivist rather than a writer, not because her writing is bad but because her archives are outstanding. If fandom can be said to be a community, it's built on the hard work of people like Kate.
Helen is just really smart and funny. And, I don't know why I hardly ever have anything else to say about her stories other than that, even though I've liked pretty much everything she's written (with the caveat that I haven't read any of her NSlash other than "The Same Inside" and a few chapters of Guerillas, which I thought was supposed to be a comedy)--but forgive my laziness
Mary Borsellino -- I just really like her sensibility.
Jennifer-Oksana aka Jennifer Stoy
Julie Fortune (aka the artist formerly known as RLC) --
Tanja Kinkel -- If I won the lottery, I would pay someone to translate Tanja's novel about Byron into English.
shalott (or, the artist formerly known as the Lady of Shalott)
I haven't gotten around to writing blurbs about them, but the following writers are also well worth checking out (and this is by no means a complete list):
Loch Ness
Ladonna King aka Sleeps With Coyotes