Nabbing this from Karen Duvall…

The Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers Colorado Gold writing contest is open for submissions.

Those of you who’ve been around a while might know I’m a bit evangelical on the topic of the RMFW. They’re the organization which lit a fire under my ass to get published: I finaled in the contest in 2002 with a (still unfinished) novel called MANIFEST DESTINY, which got me in to talk to my first editor. She was a small press editor and said, in short, “Go to the big boys, you can do better than small press.” (When I told my Del Rey editor this last summer, she perked all up and was like, “Wait, wait, what? What book is this? Have I seen it?” *laughs* I told her no, she’d see it after the Inheritors’ Cycle was done, and she was satisfied. :))

The conference that year was exactly what I needed to come away really prepared to make a career of writing. The next year, almost on a lark, I submitted RIGHT ANGLES TO FAERYLAND, which, to my astonishment, won. Teresa Nielson Hayden was the judging editor that year, and though I couldn’t go to the conference, I met up with her in New York and had talked extensively about writing in general and my writing in specific.

She said two things about the RMFW: one was that my entry for the contest was the first one she’d read, and that she thought, “If they’re all this good, we (the publishers) are really doing something *wrong*, because all these people should be *published*!”

(Three months later I got my first contract.)

She also said the RMFW was the least neurotic group of writers she’d ever met. That may sound like a back-handed compliment, but in fact I think it’s an extremely front-handed one: the RMFW are in fact incredibly lacking in neuroticism, and *extremely* high in “got our shit together and are six kinds of awesome”. They pride themselves on the quality of submissions to their contest, and I personally know at least three people (including myself) who were published after winning or finalling in their contest.

THE QUEEN’S BASTARD is, in fact, dedicated to the RMFW. I met my Del Rey editor, Betsy Mitchell, at the 2005 conference (which I attended in the express hope of meeting her), and sold her two books a few months later. These people, in a very, very real way, have made my career. I cannot say enough nice things about them, and I can’t recommend their contest highly enough.

Anyway, so there’s more about it at the RMFW website or at Karen’s blog, and I really really do recommend considering submitting something to it.