Congratulations to fellow antipodean, Connor Chamberlain, who was a winner in the 40th anniversary Writers and Illustrators of the Future earlier this year.

Connor is a visual artist  and self-proclaimed 'fantasy nerd' from Dunedin, New Zealand. Connor says he draws inspiration from the natural landscape around him and looking through his work on his Instagram page, you can really see that come through.
​

​If you're familiar with my back-story, I won the writers side of this international competition back in 2011, in fact that was my first professional sale. That story earned a cash prize and a trip to Hollywood for a week-long workshop with professional writers like Kevin J Anderson, Tim Powers, Robert J Sawyer and the late, great Mike Resnick, culminating an a genuine, honest to goodness Hollywood black-tie award ceremony!

​It looks like the competition is still going strong as Connor got similar treatment complete with flights, ceremony and a workshop with professional illustrators.

The great thing about the competition is that it's only open to new talent. If you've already published a novel or (if memory serves) three professionally-paid short stories, then sorry you can't enter. In that way it promotes new writers and illustrators and is still the best venue for finding and promoting new talent. 

Anyway, congratulations Connor. I hope this is the start of a long and creative career. And to any other budding writers and illustrators, you can check out the competition at www.writersofthefuture.com/

It's SNAFU time again and this time it's even more FU than normal.

If you know about these great anthologies from Cohesion Press you know that they're always packed full of action and feature short stories from some of the best names in the business and this next outing is no exception. In fact, the previous books have done so well that they've even caught the eye of Hollywood with several stories being picked up by Blur Studios for their Emmy Award Winning Netflix series Love Death + Robots.

I've been lucky enough to feature in four of the previous books along with a couple of repeats in best-of and charity collections. This time I'm on the cover, and sharing it with none other than such big names as Alan Baxter and James A Moore.

My Story, King Rat, is a cyberpunk tale with a side of body horror in keeping with the 'Punk'd' theme. Here comes the pitch:

A cybernetic mercenary endowed with all the aspects of the Chinese zodiac discovers a link between his own past and his latest quarry: a shared history that offers the chance to right a decades-old wrong. But is there also the chance for something more than just revenge?

If that sounds intriguing, or maybe you want to check out some of the other stories, SNAFU: Punk'd is already available for presale and will be coming out at Halloween.

Hi All... I realize it's been a bit quiet here lately despite quite a lot going on in my writing life at the moment. If you want to keep in touch, I suggest checking out my Facebook page. I will try and keep this website updated, but if history is any guide, I probably won't.

RPL Johnson