This Quills Conference was memorable for a couple of reasons. One, I'm no longer part of the executive committee. Every year or two, we cycle in a new President Elect, the old President Elect becomes President, and the President becomes Past President. I've been the Past President for two years, so I am now out to pasture for a bit before finding where I want to land in the local writing community. I gave a nice (and short) speech on focus, and that you find more of what you look for. So go looking for success, and do things successful authors do, and hang out with successful people.
Also memorable was winning two first place awards on the writing contests.
The first win was for my unpublished short story "Scrappers of the Great Starship" about a guy who makes a meager living scrounging scrap from an old starship that crashed generations earlier.
The second was a tie for first place for the Gold Quill in the Collections catergory of published works with The Best of the Planetary Anthology Series which can be found on Amazon. I've updated the cover to include the emblem for the award as shown here. I couldn't have done this one without the help of twenty-two awesome authors and several editors from the original series.
You can click the picture to go to Amazon to see it there. It comes in ebook and paperback. It's also on Kobo, Apple, and Nook. This was my first venture into wide ebook distribution with self-publishing, and it worked out pretty well.
