That night, the police found Peyton’s body dead in his truck in the lot overlooking the beach, and the spirits—Naiads and Nereids, kelpies and banshees—wailed their grief into the wind.
Peyton had been their touchstone and gatekeeper. Where he found openness and welcome, the spirits sowed blessings in his wake. And where he was spurned by hearts sealed tighter than double-paned windows, where the black miasma of greed and hate seeped in through cracks and crevices, that’s where the vapors built until the spirits raged like angry Maenads, rending sanity the way they’d once rent flesh.
By morning, a fresh wind had swept the storm clouds away, and the last remnants of a silver mist floated above the waves. The sea grew calm, and sunlight rippled golden on the water of Poseidon’s eyes.
In the months that followed, Aames sold his hollow mansion and built a new place on an empty lot a block from the post office.
Anya took back her maiden name after her husband was found hanged in his cell, and she moved into the boarded up shanty-house next door to me. With Herb Kelly’s money at her disposal, it wasn’t long before the place had fresh paint, a new roof, curtains in the windows, and a garden full of roses. Her cheeks regained their color, and her raven’s-wing hair grew long and lush again.
As for me, I still tell tales of our lives by the sea, written in words of paint and shell. After the Sea Center opened, I added a single figure to my mural, the silhouette of woman standing alone on the bluffs with her long, dark hair splayed out in the wind, searching for the souls of her children on the face of the turbulent sea.
Read
L Ron Hubbard Presents
Writers of the Future
Volume 30
Get your copy here.
On the Direction of Art
by Bob Eggleton
This past winter I got to serve as the guest Art Director for the Illustrators of the Future Contest. What a rewarding and fun experience! I’m following a path blazed for this Contest by Frank Kelly Freas in 1987.
In the business of illustration, it’s likely one will deal with an art director. Of course, over the decades the definition of an art director has changed; more and more I have seen the title “Director of Marketing” used, as if the art should be sidelined to something of a commodity.
Art directors typically oversee the way an illustration should look in the context of its use. Many times good art directors are themselves artists.
Serving as the Art Director, I was able to view up to three sketches of ideas submitted by each artist. Some of the “sketches,” I will say, looked like finished works, which tells a lot about the time we live in. In my early career, I did mere scribblings for sketches!
I believe in never telling an artist what to do. I always look for the strongest idea, and I found with a number of people it was also their personal favorite, so I simply said, “Go with it.” I refuse to micromanage, because I have seen art that looks just that: micromanaged. I’ve been the victim of the bad kind of direction myself. My preference is to let the artists shine. For Illustrators of the Future, I sometimes made a nudge or a suggestion that only clarified the idea, trying to take the concept from good to great.
What makes an exceptional artist, to me, is his or her ability to tell a good story with a minimal amount of visual information. I am a big fan of the idea that “less is more.” Something does not have to be overwrought to be “finished.”
Also when an artist is illustrating someone’s story, it is not always necessary to stay totally in structure with the prose. The illustration should augment and bring another dimension to the story, perhaps something that the writer never thought of. I like writers a lot, but they can be “visually illiterate,” which I say in jest, meaning they don’t “see” in the same way an artist sees. The artist’s vision brings a unique perspective to the story, an added dimension. Even the writer often will say, when viewing an illustration, “I never thought of that! What a great idea!”
With illustrations, I like to invite viewers to make up their own story, or imprint something of themselves onto it. The art becomes personal to everyone who views it.
It is said that pictures are worth a thousand words. Well, one picture for a story just adds one thousand words to that story! Overseeing so much of this incredible work with Illustrators of the Future has been an honor and it has added to my own learning and opened my eyes to new ways of thinking.
Onward!
List of Illustrations by Artist
Alex Brock
The God Whisperer
Amit Dutta
Planar Ghosts
Megan Kelchner
Half Past
Tung Chi Lee
Unrefined
Shuangjian Liu
A Revolutionary’s Guide to Practical Conjuration
Michelle Lockamy
Wisteria Melancholy
Bernardo Mota
Inconstant Moon
Megen Nelson
Poseidon’s Eyes
Greg Opalinski
When Shadows Fall
Taylor Payton
The Graver
Quinlan Septer
Twelve Minutes to Vinh Quang
Emily Siu
Purposes Made for Alien Minds
Trevor Smith
Between Screens
Daniel Tyka
Rough Draft
Daniel Tyka
Switch
Choong Yoon
Stars That Make Dark Heaven Light
The Year in the Contests
This year we celebrate the seventy-fifth anniversary of The Golden Pen contest, a small writing competition that L. Ron Hubbard launched while wintering for a few weeks in Alaska. At the time, Ron was a widely-known author, with over 120 published novels and short stories. He’d worked in Hollywood as a screenwriter, was publishing under half a dozen pen names, had lectured at Harvard, and had been president of the American Fiction Guild.
While literally iced-in at port, as I understand it, he initiated a small contest aimed at inspiring new authors. Like the current contests, it was open to anyone who was not yet a professional, and it offered sizable rewards for the winners.
I like what Ron said at the time, for not only does he inform us as to why he initiated that contest, I think he is telling us why the Writers of the Future Contest was so dear to his heart:
“It has been my experience that almost everyone, at one period or another of his life, has harbored a desire to write. Some have let that desire burn very dimly and have not even put the matter to test. A few have put words to paper and have laid the unfinished product away in some remote corner where it will remain forgotten forever. A very few have written several things and have actually desired to do something with them. Perhaps one percent of the total has gone so far as to send a manuscript to a publisher. The estimated figures are that ten million people are trying to write and sell stories, that ten thousand have submitted stories to magazines, that two thousand have sold a story at one time or another and that there are only five hundred full professional writers in a nation of a hundred and thirty million people.
“Why?
“The amateur stares at his unfinished script and thinks that in view of all those top-heavy figures against him he has not the slightest chance and so abandons the attempt. If he only knew how anxiously new writers are sought by editors. The person who submits an occasional story is discouraged by the rejection slips he collects and so abandons the trial.
“The person who occasionally sells a story and yet does not become a full-time professional writer is either up against the limitations of his imagination or his ability to concentrate. Ten million people are trying to write and sell stories. Five hundred writing and selling consistently. What do the five hundred have which the ten million have not? Some say it is the ability to sw
eat. ‘Ten ounces of inspiration and ten tons of perspiration,’ as a sage writer once put it. That, however, is not the entire truth.
“The amateur writer, even when he has completed a manuscript, seldom knows what to do with it or how to go about getting it in print. That is information which one earns dearly.…”
Having thus spoken, L. Ron Hubbard initiated The Golden Pen contest there in Anchorage, Alaska, inviting local residents to send in a Christmas tale to the listeners at KGBU radio station.
Times have changed. The US is much larger now than it was then, but the love of writing has not diminished over the years. Twenty years ago, a major women’s magazine took a poll and found out that some forty percent of adult women hoped to write a book at some time in their lives.
It struck me while reading Ron’s words that we as Contest judges, three quarters of a century later, are acting from the same motivations that he did. We still see new writers with superb talent who just don’t understand this business, don’t know how to break into it, and don’t know how special they are. For that reason, all of us at the Contests are still here reaching out to new writers and illustrators, hoping to discover and train others who yearn to develop their own artistic skills.
CONTEST GROWTH
This last year was a banner year for the Writers and Illustrators of the Future Contests. Each quarter seems to be larger than the one before, and the Writers of the Future brought in a record number of submissions. With the art competition, we’re also greatly increasing our worldwide flavor, bringing in submissions from countries that we hadn’t heard from before.
We now have contest entrants from a total of 171 countries across the globe. This year we added North Korea, Slovakia, Bhutan, Cambodia, Paraguay and Vanuatu.
The writer winners this year come from the United States and Australia, while our illustrator winners hailed from the US, Taiwan, China, South Korea, Malawi and Poland.
Normally I like to list recent publications by past winners, but I’m afraid that the lists are growing too long! In the past year alone, we have more than a hundred novels released by past contest winners. Included among those are releases from some of our newest winners, Tom Doyle (Vol 28) and Randy Henderson (Vol 30) who both released books through Tor. We’re also seeing a tremendous number of short stories published by our winners, and we’d like to congratulate them on their productivity.
AWARDS NEWS FOR PAST WINNERS
Some of our past winners won major awards in the field this year. We won’t go into all of those who were finalists for major awards, since once again, the lists are growing too long, but here are some highlights.
Writer winner Aliette de Bodard (WotF Volume 23) won the Nebula Award for Best Novelette for “The Waiting Stars.”
Writer winner Karen Joy Fowler (WotF Volume 2) won 2014 Pen/Faulkner Award and was a finalist in the California Book Awards and the Man Booker Prize for her We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves.
Illustrator winner Sarah Web (WotF Vol 30) won the Hugo for Best Fan Artist.
NEW WRITERS OF THE FUTURE JUDGES
This past year we were delighted to add two new judges to our illustrious panel: Nancy Kress, a New York Times bestselling author and Hugo and Nebula Award winner and Brandon Sanderson, multiple award winner and #1 international bestselling author.
PASSING
We are saddened by the loss of one of our winners and a longtime supporter of the Contest, Jay Lake (Vol 19). Those that knew him best loved him most, and that is a very good thing.
RECOGNITION FOR THE CONTESTS
Over the course of this year, the contest became much more widely known. The amount of media attention (as measured by impressions on television, radio, and in the papers) grew by more than 250%, which speaks well for future expansion of the Contests, and also greater publicity for our winners.
The Writer’s Digest Award for service to the writing community was presented to L. Ron Hubbard and the Contest by Nancy Kress at the awards ceremony last year (shortly before we invited her to be a judge). Nancy has been a columnist for Writer’s Digest for the past sixteen years.
RECOGNITION FROM THE CONTEST
The L. Ron Hubbard Lifetime Achievement Award was presented to Orson Scott Card by Joni Labaqui (Contest Director) at the awards ceremony last year. Mr. Card gave an eloquent acceptance speech, beautifully acknowledging the Contest and applauding its results.
For Contest year 31, the L. Ron Hubbard Writers of the Future Contest winners are:
First Quarter
1. Tim Napper
Twelve Minutes to Vinh Quang
2. Auston Habershaw
A Revolutionary’s Guide to Practical Conjuration
3. Martin L. Shoemaker
Unrefined
Second Quarter
1. Kary English
Poseidon’s Eyes
2. Samantha Murray
Half Past
3. Scott R. Parkin
Purposes Made for Alien Minds
Third Quarter
1. Daniel J. Davis
The God Whisperer
2. Amy M. Hughes
The Graver
3. Michael T. Banker
Wisteria Melancholy
Fourth Quarter
1. Sharon Joss
Stars That Make Dark Heaven Light
2. Steve Pantazis
Switch
3. Krystal Claxton
Planar Ghosts
Published Finalist
Zach Chapman
Between Screens
For the year 2014, the L. Ron Hubbard Illustrators of the Future Contest winners are:
First Quarter
Tung Chi Lee
Michelle Lockamy
Emily Siu
Second Quarter
Amit Dutta
Shuangjian Liu
Taylor Payton
Third Quarter
Alex Brock
Quinlan Septer
Choong Yoon
Fourth Quarter
Megan Kelchner
Megen Nelson
Daniel Tyka
Our heartiest congratulations to all the winners! May we see much more of their work in the future.
NEW WRITERS!
L. Ron Hubbard’s
Writers of the
Future Contest
Opportunity for new and amateur writers of
new short stories or novelettes of science fiction
or fantasy.
No entry fee is required.
Entrants retain all publication rights.
ALL AWARDS ARE ADJUDICATED BY
PROFESSIONAL WRITERS ONLY
Prizes every three months: $1,000, $750, $500
Annual Grand Prize: $5,000 additional!
Don’t delay! Send your entry now!
To submit your entry electronically go to:
www.writersofthefuture.com/enter-writer-contest
E-mail:
[email protected] To submit your entry via mail send to:
L. Ron Hubbard’s Writers of the Future Contest
7051 Hollywood Blvd.
Los Angeles, California 90078
WRITERS’ CONTEST RULES
1. No entry fee is required, and all rights in the story remain the property of the author. All types of science fiction, fantasy and dark fantasy are welcome.
2. By submitting to the Contest, the entrant agrees to abide by all Contest rules.
3. All entries must be original works, in English. Plagiarism, which includes the use of third-party poetry, song lyrics, characters or another person’s universe, without written permission, will result in disqualification. Excessive violence or sex, determined by the judges, will result in disqualification. Entries may not h
ave been previously published in professional media.
4. To be eligible, entries must be works of prose, up to 17,000 words in length. We regret we cannot consider poetry, or works intended for children.
5. The Contest is open only to those who have not professionally published a novel or short novel, or more than one novelette, or more than three short stories, in any medium. Professional publication is deemed to be payment of at least six cents per word, and at least 5,000 copies, or 5,000 hits.
6. Entries submitted in hard copy must be typewritten or a computer printout in black ink on white paper, printed only on the front of the paper, double-spaced, with numbered pages. All other formats will be disqualified. Each entry must have a cover page with the title of the work, the author’s legal name, a pen name if applicable, address, telephone number, e-mail address and an approximate word count. Every subsequent page must carry the title and a page number, but the author’s name must be deleted to facilitate fair, anonymous judging.
Entries submitted electronically must be double-spaced and must include the title and page number on each page, but not the author’s name. Electronic submissions will separately include the author’s legal name, pen name if applicable, address, telephone number, e-mail address and approximate word count.
7. Manuscripts will be returned after judging only if the author has provided return postage on a self-addressed envelope.
8. We accept only entries that do not require a delivery signature for us to receive them.
9. There shall be three cash prizes in each quarter: a First Prize of $1,000, a Second Prize of $750, and a Third Prize of $500, in US dollars. In addition, at the end of the year the winners will have their entries rejudged, and a Grand Prize winner shall be determined and receive an additional $5,000. All winners will also receive trophies.
10. The Contest has four quarters, beginning on October 1, January 1, April 1 and July 1. The year will end on September 30. To be eligible for judging in its quarter, an entry must be postmarked or received electronically no later than midnight on the last day of the quarter. Late entries will be included in the following quarter and the Contest Administration will so notify the entrant.