Ryan Harvey Wins Big
It gives me great pleasure to announce what some of you may have already heard — the talented Ryan Harvey, author and Black Gate blogger extraordinaire, has placed third in the International Writers of the Future contest for the First Quarter of 2010.
Judged by a panel of experts made up of well-known speculative fiction writers like Orson Scott Card, Anne McCaffrey, Eric Flint (to name just a few!) the Writers of the Future contest was established 27 years ago by L. Ron Hubbard “to discover and provide talented new and aspiring writers of science fiction and fantasy a chance to have their work seen and acknowledged.”
I can think of few writers as deserving of notice as Ryan, who’s been tirelessly drafting brilliant essays and reviews not only at Black Gate, but for his own blog and the defunct swordandsorcery.org web site and other places besides.
What many of you may not know is that Ryan is also a talented fiction writer. The winning story is from his Ahn-Tarqa short fiction cycle which — if you haven’t already experienced it — will be featured in two upcoming stories in Black Gate.
I hope you’ll join with us in wishing Ryan congratulations!
Awesome, Ryan! Congrats!
I would like to give special mention to Bill Ward, who did the critique on the winning story for my last round of revisions. And huge thanks to Howard here for always pushing me to keeping working at this series. The Black Gate crew is the best inspiration I could imagine.
Congrats! I look forward to reading the stories in BG.
Hurray! I shall keep my eye out for you name in Black Gate!!!
Uh. That would be “YOUR name” if I were actually writing English instead of my native Martian, where the “r” is sometimes invisible.
Congratulations Ryan!
And don’t believe C.S.E. when she tells you she’s from Mars. As anyone who knows her can attest, she’s 100% Venus.
John
Congrats, Ryan.
I knew something like this was in your future.
Write on.
[…] One of these words would later have an important impact on my life: Acolyte. In original D&D terms, this is the title of a 1st level Cleric. The dictionary definition is an assistant to a priest in a ceremony, or any sort of apprentice. Something about the term impressed itself on my young mind: I thought it a very beautiful word, with aural power and a sense of mystery. I started to encounter the word later in my fantasy reading, particularly Clark Ashton Smith’s work. (“Acolyte” is just his kind of medicine.) Eventually, I wrote a story where “acolyte” seemed the right word to use for a class of apprentices, and the word got into the title as well: “An Acolyte of Black Spires.” And this is the story that won The Writers of the Future Contest. […]
[…] as well as the first-place winner from my quarter, Brennan “No Relationship to Me” Harvey. Winning the Writers of the Future Contest has opened many doors for me, and at LOSCON I discovered a few more swinging open, since it brought […]