NEW USERS! INTRODUCE YOURSELVES!

@wulfmoon Thank you for the encouragement, Wulf! Those are plenty of reasons to keep writing and submitting! I'm sure excited to be here. I'm halfway through the course now, and it's helping me over roadblocks in unexpected ways. Will keep at it.

@angelgonzales28 Welcome, Angel! Congratulations on your upcoming diploma and your work helping future writers. Good to have you here.

@spencer_s Spencer, thank you for the welcome!

@marius Sorry for this delay in response, had some busy weeks and had to get the Q4 ready. 

Then you're one of us already 😅 (Hope nothing bad happened of c.)

That's great re Q4! Good luck!! 😃

@hunterkay Welcome! 😃 That's cool with your novels! And also with your HM! Congrats! 🎉

@nehakakar Welcome! 😃

@jphollingsworth1995 Welcome! That sounds like a great pen name to me Aside from this great forum, really recommend both the WotF workshop + the podcast!

@angelgonzales28 Welcome Angel, nice to meet you! 😊

That sounds great! Good luck with your submissions to the contest!

Posted by: @hunterkay

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@wulfmoon Thank you for the encouragement, Wulf! Those are plenty of reasons to keep writing and submitting! I'm sure excited to be here. I'm halfway through the course now, and it's helping me over roadblocks in unexpected ways. Will keep at it.

As Picard says, "Make it so."

Hello Everyone!

My name is Andrew Williamson, from the UK, and I made my first submission V41Q4. I found out about WotF when my son-in-law, Sam Kemp, was one one of the V35 illustrator winners (you would have met him at the workshops, @wulfmoon), but I've been self-gatekeeping for over five years. Now I've done it once, I plan to do the right thing and enter every quarter.

I won the 2000 AD Writing Competition (a live pitch in front of an MC, three judges and a theatre audience), and my comic strip story was published in the comic March 2017. I thought that my foot was in the door jam but, in the end, I just stubbed my toes. One day!

Recognising that I may not make a career from writing, I joined the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading, where I am now an Intermediate Level member. I beta read V39 and V40 and I've started on V41. I absolutely love this anthology. Such a high standard every year.

@robot_drew welcome!

@robot_drew welcome! V41Q4 is my first too 👍

Welcome! Glad you are here

Howdy, sir!
If you beta read 39, I thank you for any insight into what became the final version of my story.  

Welcome to the forum @robot_drew! I'm also from the UK (Wales), I think there's a few of us Brits about. What a cool success story you've got already. And, also, the best of luck to you in continuing the family winning streak and I hope you get a ticket to Hollywood too. 

If you come across my story beta reading for Vol 41, I thank you in advance for improving it  

Thanks for the warm welcome, all.

@tj_knight Your story still sticks in my memory. Amazing concept, great characters, natural humour and floods of emotion. I just checked my notes and this was an unbelievably polished piece. I found just the two tiniest of typos - readers probably wouldn't have even noticed. A worthy winner if ever I saw one.

@joel-c-scoberg Congratulations on your win. I imagine your story will be in the next tranche and I'm looking forward to reading it. The five I've seen so far are excellent, as expected, so no pressure 😉. By the time the stories hit us beta readers, they are pretty shiny and we just look for the very occasional typo. And, yes, I'd noticed the strength of the Brit contingent - I hope one day to join the club.

@robot_drew Welcome aboard! Very cool that your son-in-law was a Vol. 35 illustrator. Now it's your turn to go on the writer side to keep the family legacy alive.

Make it so! And writing fresh stories every quarter is a great way to get you there. Stay the course and keep honing your skills. I highly recommend the WotF Online Workshop if you haven't taken it yet. It's free and it was taught by the best. It will help you with your goals.

Cheers!

Hello!

My name is Brayden Kesteloot I am from Colorado but am currently a Freshman at Embry Riddle Daytona. I am a self-taught writer of about 5 years. I write in many different genres, from High Fantasy to Steampunk to Dark Folk with a specialty in atmosphere and description and heavy themes of Nature and Dreams. I also have a big poetry project that I've been building up for the last couple of months. I aspire one day to publish all of my stories and to share my worlds with everyone. I discovered this contest a while back while searching for ways to get my foot in the door into the writing world. 

I am currently working on a story that I am very proud of which is my first ever story with magic in it though minimal. It's a fantasy/epic mix, at least that's how I describe it. I intend on it being my first submission when it's done. Maybe I'll get lucky and it'll be my last. 

Farswept is the painted sky, glorious as the moon, such as my dreams, forever bound to the stars. 

Welcome @erawen-evgeniko.

You will find insightful information in the forum and through discussions with members. I applaud you for taking the step early in your career to join a forum like this and invest in learning.  Good luck in your creative writing journey.    

Hello Everyone!

My name is Gamble. I joined up this past spring during the runup to Q2, but I hadn't posted an intro yet. I mostly write high fantasy, which doesn't work well with wordcount limits. I'm currently dabbling with a sci-fi short for the upcoming Q1.  

I'm a born and raised Californian transplanted into the Pacific Northwest. I'm also a former IN & CA officer (shout out to @stephcat and @emlouviere; there's probably some other Vets on here, but those are two I noticed so far).

I really enjoyed the WOTF Workshop, and I'm looking forward to the Q&A with OSC tomorrow. See you there! 

Great to meet you all!

~M. Gamble See

@erawen-evgeniko 

Welcome to the forum, Brayden!

You have diverse interests in writing which will serve you well. I love writing epic fantasy, but I finally won this contest by pushing myself to write in genres and sub-genres far outside my comfort zone. Keep pushing your boundaries—that’s where growth lives.

Do take the WotF Online Workshop. Ideas are great, so is the writing itself, but until you learn the elements of a working story and how to professionally implement them in your work, your arrows will miss the bullseye. Knowledge is power, but only if you figure out how to effectively implement that knowledge. That’s where the workshop can help. So can the many forumites here that are working together to advance.

Enjoy the process, take advantage of all the tools here, and best of success!

Welcome aboard!

Hi everybody,

I signed up for the workshop yesterday and got this account as a bonus. This seems like a wonderful, supportive community of like-minded writers, and I look forward to being a part of it. My story got 2nd place in Q3 this year, so I hope I'll get to meet some of you in April, too! 

A bit about me . . . I live in the Phoenix, AZ area in the US, and I like to write stories that combine fantasy and sci-fi. My story in V41 will be my first pro-level publication. The phone call from Joni caught me completely off guard. I didn't know finalists got phone calls, so my first thought when I saw I had a message from the contest administrator was that I must have done something really, *really* wrong when I submitted my story--I'd never been called to the principal's office for a good reason before. I'm immensely grateful that the news turned out to be so good!

@mgamblesee welcome.

@ian1109 welcome. Big congrats on the win.

Posted by: @toddjones

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@mgamblesee welcome.

[My apologies for the repeated post. I think I accidentally deleted my account last time.]

Hi everybody,

I signed up for the workshop yesterday and got this account as a bonus. This seems like a wonderful, supportive community of like-minded writers, and I look forward to being a part of it. My story got 2nd place in Q3 this year, so I hope I'll get to meet some of you in April, too!

A bit about me . . . I live in the Phoenix, AZ area in the US, and I like to write stories that combine fantasy and sci-fi. My story in V41 will be my first pro-level publication. The phone call from Joni caught me completely off guard. I didn't know finalists got phone calls, so my first thought when I saw I had a message from the contest administrator was that I must have done something really, *really* wrong when I submitted my story--I'd never been called to the principal's office for a good reason before. I'm immensely grateful that the news turned out to be so good!

@mgamblesee Thank you.

It's been a long journey and finding this forum a few years ago was the start of becoming serious about my writing.

Welcome, Ian! Grats on 2nd place.  

If you didn't know about the call, I wonder if you know about the workshop week and the gala.  

Welcome to the forum Ian. Huge congratulations on winning the contest.

@ian1109 

Welcome to the forum, Ian, and congratulations on the win! I finished 3rd in Q3! I look forward to meeting you in Hollywood next April