I'm a Writer of the Future

I just won a major contest called "science fiction’s equivalent to American Idol"

The news is still surreal to me: I just found out that I’m a winner of the most recent Writers of the Future Contest, what author Kevin J. Anderson once described as “science fiction’s equivalent to American Idol.” My story, “As Long as You Both Shall Live,” was selected for the third-place prize out of thousands of submissions. [Here’s the official press release!]

The top three winners from each quarter of the year—12 in total—get invited to Hollywood every spring for a weeklong workshop taught by top authors in the field (last year’s was run by one of my longtime favorite authors, Tim Powers). The week is capped by a black-tie gala awards ceremony—complete with a red carpet lined with paparazzi—where winners give an acceptance speech streamed to an audience of thousands. [Read a recap of this year’s gala from one of the winners]

Last year’s awards ceremony

In addition to the workshop week, my win includes a cash prize and having my story published in Volume 42¹ of the annual bestselling Writers of the Future anthology. The aforementioned awards ceremony doubles as the official book launch, where I’ll get to autograph the freshly printed books.

As if that’s not enough, there is a parallel Illustrators of the Future Contest, and winning artists get paired with writers to illustrate scenes from each anthology story.

This prize is special to me for several reasons. The story idea was born from a dream I had just two days before the contest deadline. I wrote most of the 6,000-word story on the day of the deadline—my most prolific day of writing ever. And I named the main character after my friend Scott Petri, who recently passed away.

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Read more about the contest and how my award-winning story came to be:

5,000 words in a day: a big deal for a slow writer

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The way I found out about my win had its own share of drama.

When contest results are determined each quarter, the eight finalists (from which winners are selected) typically get notified first, and then everyone else gets their results (semi-finalists, honorable mention, and straight rejections). So when I read online chatter from people receiving honorable mentions and rejections, I assumed my own rejection was forthcoming.

Later that day, I was reading Stephen King’s book On Writing—specifically, a passage in which he described receiving a life-changing phone call about the publishing of Carrie, his first novel. At that very moment, my own phone rang with news that I was a finalist! I barely slept for the next five nights. But then I got my own life-changing phone call.

Now my story begins.

1. As every true science fiction fan knows, “42” is the Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, The Universe, and Everything.