The Authors Quill Guest artist HeatherAnne Lee writer Martin Shoemaker Eric James & Darci Stone

SAVANNAH STUDENT WINS
INTERNATIONAL ILLUSTRATION CONTEST
Upcoming Hollywood Awards Event

Savannah, Georgia student Ms. HeatherAnne Lee is a winner in the L. Ron Hubbard Illustrators of the Future Contest earning her a trip to Hollywood for a week-long master-class workshop, an awards event and her winning art will be published in the international bestselling anthology, L. Ron Hubbard Presents Writers of the Future Volume 41. HeatherAnne is originally from Washington State and is currently studying at the Savannah College of Art and Design.

HeatherAnne Lee was born in 2004 in Federal Way, Washington, and has lived across the US from Hawaii to New York and Vermont. HeatherAnne, or “Heather” to her friends, now resides in Savannah, Georgia, pursuing a Bachelor of Fine Arts in illustration at the Savannah College of Art and Design.

Heather started drawing as soon as she could hold a crayon and never stopped, graduating from crayon to graphite to paint, and now primarily works digitally. Despite working on a screen, Heather holds to her painting knowledge, layering colors and textures on her drawing tablet, emulating traditional painting techniques in a digital medium.

Heather takes much of her inspiration from the world around her, translating reality into epics and stories of dragons and knights. Heather always strives to push her work to the limit, working with clients to bring their stories to life through her illustrations.

The Illustrators of the Future Contest judges include, Bob Eggleton (11 Chesley Awards and 9 Hugo Awards), Larry Elmore (Dungeons & Dragons book covers), Echo Chernik (graphic designs for major corporations including Celestial Seasonings tea packaging), Rob Prior (art for Spawn, Heavy Metal comics and Buffy the Vampire Slayer), Ciruelo (Eragon Coloring Book).

MARTIN SHOEMAKER
Author and Writers of the Future Winner – Biography

Martin L. Shoemaker is a programmer who writes on the side… or maybe it’s the other way around. Programming pays the bills, but a second-place story in the Jim Baen Memorial Writing Contest earned him lunch with Buzz Aldrin. Programming never did that! His work has appeared in Analog Science Fiction & Fact, Galaxy’s Edge, Digital Science Fiction, Forever Magazine, Writers of the Future, and numerous anthologies including Year’s Best Military and Adventure SF 4, Man-Kzin Wars XV, The Jim Baen Memorial Award: The First Decade, Little Green Men—Attack!, More Human Than Human: Stories of Androids, Robots, and Manufactured Humanity, Avatar Dreams, Weird World War III, Weird World War III: China, Weird World War IV, ROBOSOLDIERS: Thank You for Your Servos, Gunfight on Europa Station, Surviving Tomorrow, Humanity 2.0, Murderbirds, Vampire Survival Guide: An Anthology for Cautious Immortals, and Tales of the United States Space Force. His Clarkesworld story "Today I Am Paul" appeared in four different year’s best anthologies and eight international editions. His follow-on novel, Today I Am Carey, was published by Baen Books in March 2019. His novel The Last Dance was published by 47North in November 2019, and was the number one science fiction eBook on Amazon during October’s prerelease. The sequel, The Last Campaign was published in October 2020. Eric James Stone is a past Nebula Award winner, Hugo Award nominee, Writers of the Future Contest winner, and two-time finalist for the Association for Mormon Letters Awards. Over sixty of his stories have been published in venues such as Year’s Best SF, Analog Science Fiction and Fact, and Nature. His science fiction thriller Unforgettable, published by Baen Books, has been optioned by Hollywood multiple times.

The son of an immigrant from Argentina, Eric grew up bilingual and spent much of his childhood living in Latin America. He also lived for five years in England and became trilingual while serving a two-year mission for his church in Italy. After majoring in political science at BYU (where he sang in the Russian Choir for two years), he earned a law degree from Baylor. He did political work in Washington, D.C., for several years before shifting career tracks to become a web developer.

After giving up on creative writing for over a decade, in 2002 he started writing fiction again. In 2007 Eric got laid off from his day job just in time to go to the Odyssey Writing Workshop. He has since found a new day job and now works as a systems administrator and programmer.

From 2009 to 2015 Eric was an assistant editor for Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show.

Eric lives in Utah with his wife, Darci, who is an award-winning author herself, in addition to being a high school science teacher and programmer. They have two children.

Find out more about Eric here,...

EricJamesStone.com

DARCI STONE
Author and Writers of the Future Winner – Biography

Darci graduated from Brigham Young University with a degree in Physics Teaching and a minor in Cultural Anthropology. Her story in Writers of the Future Volume 34 (earning her the grand prize!) was strongly influenced by both her love of science and her love of world cultures. Darci lived at a boarding school in Singapore while attending the United World College of Southeast Asia on scholarship. She also taught English in Russia, and has participated in humanitarian aid projects in India and Cambodia. Darci currently teaches high school physics in American Fork Utah and is a web developer for online educational software. She married into the world of speculative fiction when she said “yes” to Nebula Award Winner, Eric James Stone. While dating, she began attending his weekly writing group. After a while she realized, “I could do that,” and started working on a story of her own. Darci has always enjoyed the mix of science and adventure found in the works of Michael Crichton. This award proves once and for all that Eric “married up” because he only took second place in his quarter for Writer’s of the Future Volume 21, while Darci managed to take first as well as winning the grand prize of Golden Brush Award and $5,000!