Writers of the Future
If you’re reading this, you probably already know that my short story “Five Days Until Sunset” won first place in the quarterly Writers of the Future contest. The win earned me a trip to Hollywood (the Hollywood; not the one in Florida or the one in in Ireland) to participate in the fortieth annual Writers of the Future workshop and awards gala.
From April 20th to 26th, together with twelve other WOTF winners, I participated in an intensive master class taught by some of the top names in science fiction and fantasy: Kevin J. Anderson, Orson Scott Card, Mark Leslie, Larry Niven, Jody Lynn Nye, Nnedi Okorafor, Robert J. Sawyer, and others. I’ve been back home for nearly a week, and my head is still spinning.
The other twelve winners are all artful writers and wonderful human beings. We got to know each other and really became a tight little community.
Also in attendance that week were the twelve winners of the Illustrators of the Future contest. Each of these artists was paired up with one of the winning stories, and created an illustration that appears alongside the story in this year’s the Writers of the Future anthology.
One of the most emotional moments of the week was the unveiling of the twelve illustrations. I expected to see a scene from my story literally depicted. Instead, Illustrator of the Future winner Steve Bentley created something that communicated the soul of the story and the sense of possibility I was trying to convey.
Coming soon
“Money, Wealth, and Soil” will appear in the May/June issue of Analog Science Fiction & Fact. It tells a near-future story of trying to make economic incentives align with saving the planet, of and a character who has trouble understanding that greed is not the only human motivation. The May/June issue should be released in the next few days.
A collection of my short stories should be ready for release later this year. Soon, I’ll be reaching out to my newsletter subscribers looking for volunteers to receive an advance reader copy in exchange for an honest review on Amazon or Goodreads in the first two weeks after release.
Latest publications
“Five Days Until Sunset” is part of L. Ron Hubbard Presents Writers of the Future Volume 40: www.lancerobinsonwriter.com/ stories#fivedays. It tells the story of humanity’s the first colonists to another star system, and of a young man who learns what it means to have faith in the face of inconvenient truths.
What I’m working on now
Attending regular YouTube and Netflix Anonymous meetings has done wonders for my productivity. I’m now plugging away at a prequel novel to “Five Days Until Sunset”. As with “Five Days”, I’m using the new story to explore questions about faith, sacrifice, and humanity’s relationship with the natural world.
In working on it, I’ve found the use of writing prompts surprisingly fruitful. That’s where a writer picks a random object and uses it to inspire new and unexpected elements for a story, or even constructs a whole story around the prompt. In this case, my prompt has been a rocking chair that belonged to my grandmother and now sits in my living room.
Don’t get me wrong: I’m not the kind to write completely by the seat of my pants. I’ve got a plan and an outline. But introducing the rocking chair into the story has begun to lead me in some surprising directions as I write.
How to Support an Up-and-Coming Writer
The greatest enemy of an unknown writer is not poverty but obscurity. If you want to support such a writer, the most important thing you can do is of course to read their work. It you’ve read any of my stories and enjoyed them, can I also ask you to do one or more of the following?
Forward this newsletter to someone else you think may enjoy what I write.
Write a review of Writers of the Future Volume 40 on Amazon, Goodreads, or some other platform.
Post a link to my website, my Facebook page, or one of my social media posts on your preferred social media.
This newsletter is also available as a pdf.
Congrats on the new Substack, and especially Congrats on the whirlwind win at WotF! Must have been so cool to be up on that stage. Quite the prestigious feather in your cap!