Writers and Illustrators of the Future: Winners Announced for 2009

This year’s winners in the quarterly/annual Writers and Illustrators of the Future contest were announced yesterday. As always, the winners come from around the world and are awarded cash prizes, free travel and accommodations to the annual awards presentation, week-long professional workshop and guaranteed publication in an annual anthology. Grand prize winners for writing and illustration will be announced at the annual awards ceremony to be held in August.

“It’s amazing to me that a good 60%–70% of the winners go on with successful careers in writing, and several have become best-selling authors themselves, said New York Times best-selling author and contest judge Kevin J. Anderson (Dune prequels, Star Wars, X-Files).

Throughout the Contest’s 25-year history, more than 250 writers and nearly 200 illustrators have been recognized as winners, according to Labaqui. They’ve gone on to publish over 300 novels and 3,000 short stories as well as thousands of published illustrations. Former Writers of the Future Contest winners listed on the New York Times best-seller’s list include Jo Beverly, Nancy Farmer, Karen Joy Fowler, Sean Williams, Dave Wolverton and Patrick Rothfuss.

The contest was inspired by L. Ron Hubbard 25 years ago. Because of this, I was initially skeptical of the contest, but further research revealed that it is not connected to Hubbard’s Christian Science ideology. That and seeing who the contest judges were made me a believer in the weight this contest caries in the general market for SciFi and Fantasy fiction. Judges include Kevin J. Anderson, Orson Scott Card, Anne McCaffrey, Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle, Tim Powers, Robert Sawyer, Robert Silverberg, K.D. Wentworth and equally famous illustrator judges such as Frank Frazetta, Bob Eggleton, Sergey Poyarkov, Stephen Hickman and Stephen Youll.

The contest provides new writers a leg up in entering the general market. Typically only 3 (yes, only three!) of every 10,000 manuscripts submitted in the United States each year are published, many by established authors, according to Contest Director Joni Labaqui.

So here is the list of annual winners that will be published in this year’s anthology. Keep an eye open. You may see some of these again soon in your local bookstore.

FIRST QUARTER WRITERS OF THE FUTURE

First place: Matthew Rotundo of Omaha, Nebraska, USA
Second place: Gary Kloster of Braham, Minnesota, USA
Third place: Fiona Lehn of Vancouver, British Columbia, CANADA

ILLUSTRATORS OF THE FUTURE
Oleksandra Barysheva of Matawan, New Jersey, USA
A.R. Stone of Eugene, Oregon, USA
Tobias Anson Fruge of Mesa, Arizona, USA

SECOND QUARTER WRITERS OF THE FUTURE

First place: Donald Mead of Bloomington, Illinois, USA
Second place: Mike Wood of Wirral, ENGLAND
Third place: Gra Linnaea of Eugene, Oregon, USA

ILLUSTRATORS OF THE FUTURE
Mark Payton of Colorado Springs, Colorado, USA
Joshua Stewart of Rexburg, Idaho, USA
Aaron Anderson of Saratosa Springs, Utah, USA

THIRD QUARTER WRITERS OF THE FUTURE

First place: Jordan Lapp of Coquitlam, British Columbia, CANADA
Second place: C.L. Holland of Anglessey, UNITED KINGDOM
Third place: Krista Hoeppner Leahy of Brooklyn, New York, USA

ILLUSTRATORS OF THE FUTURE
Douglas Bosley of Bellingham, Washington, USA
Evan Jensen of Annapolis, Maryland, USA
Ryan Behrens of Olympia, Washington, USA

FOURTH QUARTER WRITERS OF THE FUTURE

First place: Emery Huang of Orlando, Florida, USA
Second place: Heather McDougal of Davenport, California, USA
Third place: Schon Zwakman of Cottage Grove, Minnesota, USA

ILLUSTRATORS OF THE FUTURE
Jamie Luhn of Myersville, Maryland, USA
Luke Eidenschnik of St. Joseph, Minnesota, USA
Brianne Hills of Billerica, Massachusetts, USA

Congratulations to all the winners! The anthology (Volume 25) can be pre-ordered here. Release date is September 15, 2009.

Veil of Lies, by Jeri Westerson

New Paperback Cover, Available October 2009

Anything that says “medieval” immediately catches my attention. So when I saw a local author had written a novel classified as “Medieval Noir,” I was instantly interested. Then my second thought was to wonder what “Medieval Noir” was. As it turns out, Ms. Westerson has created her own little sub-genre of medieval mystery, something she describes as “darker, edgier, with hard-hitting action and characters with dirty little secrets.”

“Veil of Lies” is the first Ms. Westerson’s books relating the adventures of Crispin Guest, a down-on-his-luck, former knight turned detective in medieval London. The books opens with Crispin Guest already ostracized from the noble classes after convicted of treason against the king. Lucky to escape with his life, Crispin is left on the streets with nothing but the clothes on his back. In order to earn enough money to buy food, he hires himself out as a detective of sorts to those willing and able to pay.

The main plot in “Veil of Lies” centers around a case that Crispin reluctantly agrees to take, a husband looking to verify the fidelity or infidelity of his wife. When he discovers that there is indeed something up with the man’s wife, he returns to report his findings, only to find his client murdered. But this is not just any murder, but a murder committed inside a sealed room, locked from the inside. And thus begins a tale steeped in mystery.

I admit I don’t read a lot of mysteries, so it was fun to change gears for a bit and read a mystery with the added bonus of a medieval twist. Furthermore, I found “Veil of Lies” to be extremely well written. Ms. Westerson obviously researched her time period thoroughly. All the little details were spot on, from the food people ate to the carriages they rode in. I could almost feel the mud in the streets in the poorer parts of the city as well as the cold mist of London fog.

Throughout the book, I found the plot twisting this way and that, which kept me delightfully guessing until the end. If you can’t tell, I thoroughly enjoyed this book.

(For parents with smaller kids, this is not YA but an adult book, primarily due to a couple of scenes with mild sensuality that was, nonetheless, tastefully written.)

The “Veil of Lies” hardcover was published by St. Martin’s Minotaur in November 2008. Veil of Lies comes out in paperback October. Details here. The sequel, “Serpent in the Thorns” will be released in September 2009.

For more information on the author, visit: http://www.jeriwesterson.com
Or her blog at: http://jeriwesterson.typepad.com
In addition, Crispin Guest has his own website at: http://www.crispinguest.com

Alice in Wonderland–The Movie

Directed by Tim Burton with Johny Depp as the Mad Hatter. What else needs to be said??

The winner of The Enclave is…

The winner of “The Enclave” by Karen Hancock is…

Sandy Litke

Thank you all for entering. Keep an eye open for my next giveaway.

Barnes & Noble Launches E-Book Store

I am part of the Kindle-less crowd. Yes, it’s true–I have not joined the many who have purchased and happily used a Kindle e-book reader from Amazon. Nor have I yet acquired a much-longed-for iPhone, which also has available in the iTunes store free and not-so-free e-books (depending on what you want). My time’s coming, but meanwhile, I’m feeling left behind technologically. My Treo is aging and I’ve never been really thrilled with this particular Treo model in the first place. So it was with interest that I found Barnes & Noble launched an e-book store this week with access to more than 500,000 titles.

In addition, B&N has made its corresponding eReader application available for free for the iPhone/iPod Touch, Blackberry, Mac and PC devices. In addition, PC users and iPhone/iPod Touch users can get six books free when they download the software and set up or access their B&N online account. I’m not sure why, but Blackberry users only get four free books. Meanwhile, as a Mac user, I feel gypped–we don’t get any free books. In the long run, I suppose it’s not that big a deal for me personally because I’m not really wild about reading e-books on my laptop, but an iPhone…now that’s a different story.

True, the free books are all public domain titles. It seems B&N has partnered with Google Books to provide many such titles for free. Newer books still under copyright protection seem to be available for $9.99 or less. At least I couldn’t find any in the B&N online store for more than that.

Two features that I find appealing with the B&N eReader are the ability to access a dictionary and thesaurus while reading (I think the Kindle can do this too, though) and the Rapid Serial Visual Presentation (RSVP) feature, which automatically displays the words of the book so you can read without using a mouse or keyboard. When RSVP is turned on, eReader displays a single word or small groups of words for a short time, followed automatically by the next word or words.

For more information on B&N’s e-book store and eReader, click here or click on the box in the right sidebar.

Win a copy of The Enclave by Karen Hancock (Part 3)

This is Part 3 of a 3-day review. Part 1 can be found here and Part 2 here.

I’m not going to say much more about “The Enclave” other than what I said yesterday and the day before for fear of revealing too much. Instead, I encourage you to check this book out for yourself. And since it was just published on July 1, you have just enough time to finish it before the summer is ended.

After you finish “The Enclave”, I suggest you check out Karen’s other award-winning books:

• The Legend of the Guardian King adult fantasy series:
Book 1: The Light of Eidon (Christy award winner in 2004)
Book 2: The Shadow Within (Christy award winner in 2005)
Book 3: Shadow Over Kiriath (Christy award winner in 2006)
Book 4: Return of the Guardian-King (Christy award nominee in 2008)

• Arena (Christy award winner in 2003). You can now pick up a copy through Amazon.

If you’d like a chance to win a copy of “The Enclave” from me, leave a comment after this blog. I’ll be giving away one copy on Monday, July 27.

Links:
The Amazon link: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0764203282
Karen Hancock’s Web site: http://www.kmhancock.com/index.htm
Karen Hancock’s Blog: http://karenhancock.wordpress.com/

Let’s see what other tour members have to say:

Brandon Barr
Jennifer Bogart
Keanan Brand
Grace Bridges
Canadianladybug
Melissa Carswell
Valerie Comer
Amy Cruson
CSFF Blog Tour
Stacey Dale
D. G. D. Davidson
Janey DeMeo
Jeff Draper
Emmalyn Edwards
April Erwin
Karina Fabian
Beth Goddard
Todd Michael Greene
Heather R. Hunt
Becky Jesse
Cris Jesse
Julie
Carol Keen
Krystine Kercher
Dawn King
Mike Lynch
Melissa Meeks
Rebecca LuElla Miller
Mirtika
Eve Nielsen
Nissa
John W. Otte
Steve Rice
Crista Richey
James Somers
Speculative Faith
Stephanie
Rachel Starr Thomson
Steve Trower
Fred Warren
Elizabeth Williams