Back in 2003, I was very much a beginning speculative fiction writer, who had just made the switch from his native Dutch to English to gain access to the much larger English market for speculative fiction. Much to my amazement and delight, I’d sold my first English-language short story almost immediately after that switch, a horror/suspense tale inspired by Stephen King. I’d also written two-and-a-half speculative novelettes I was rather proud of. (The half-novelette later became a whole, and won me the Writers of the Future contest.)

Finding places to send my stories was difficult. Duotrope and The Grinder had yet to be invented, and few publications had an online presence. I was stuck with the Writer’s Market as a resource. Granted, I found Futures Mystery Magazine there, where I sold my first story, but other than that, I could not see the forest for the trees. I had no way of discerning which magazines would be suitable for my stories, and all the contests I found required an entry fee (which, with my instinctive knowledge of Yog’s Law, I immediately rejected).

So when an American friend who knew about my hobby pointed out the quarterly Writers of the Future contest to me, I didn’t think twice. No entry fee, significant prize money, and a word count limit that comfortably included my novelettes. What more did I need to know? Neither the renowned status of the contest nor its connection to Hubbard were known to me before I shoved my first novelette in an envelope and shipped it across the Atlantic. [read on…]