THUNDER BAY — A city man who got hooked on science fiction in Grade 6 is looking to an international writing competition to advance his career.
Because the piece he submitted was chosen as a finalist in the Writers of the Future competition, Lance Robinson gets some cash and a trip to Hollywood next April for a week-long workshop with top writers in the field of speculative fiction.
His story will also be published in the next edition of the international bestselling anthology L. Ron Hubbard Presents Writers of the Future.
Robinson's day job has him working in Thunder Bay as a government scientist in the field of forest ecosystem research.
But he said he showed an interest in writing as a child, started to get more serious about it as he was entering university, and had some stories published in small magazines.
"Eventually, life happened, and I got busy, had a lull in having any stories accepted, and family, job and all that kind of stuff. I kind of set the creative writing aside for a long time, a couple of decades almost."
After living in Kenya for awhile, the Saskatchewan-born man moved back to Canada in 2019 and decided it was time to get back to the keyboard.
"So I did, and I try to take it quite seriously, and I've been having some success. I've got a story coming out soon in a very well-known science fiction magazine...I'm mostly working on short fiction right now, and I've got some ideas for some novels."
This is the 40th year for the competition founded by Hubbard, a novelist who also founded the controversial Church of Scientology.
Robinson was careful to research how the contest is run, and determined that the direct connections with scientology are minimal.
"The winners over the years have been people who've got no connection with scientology, and some of them have gone on to successful careers as professional authors," he said, adding that judges each year are people not affiliated with the church.
"They seem to compartmentalize the contest...and I thought, well, I think I can work with this."
For winning the quarterly contest, Robinson gets an expense-paid trip to California and a modest $1,000 US.
There's more cash available to the winner of the final competition in the spring – $5,000 – but he's focused more on the long-term benefits for his writing career.
"I think that in this day and age it's easy for anyone to publish anything. The biggest challenge for a writer who's trying to make a career of it is getting noticed. So, aside from what I learn during the workshop week there, I'm really interested in whether this can just get me a little bit of an audience of people who look forward each year to buying that anthology of stories...to get to know my name and say 'OK, I'm gonna look this guy up and look for the next thing he writes.'"
Details about the plot of the story Robinson submitted will become available after the winning entry is announced.
