In August of 2013, I attended the annual Willamette Writers Conference. At the time, Zeroboxer was a freshly-written manuscript that I was getting ready to query. I submitted it for two professional critiques and pitched it to several agents at the conference that weekend. A few weeks later I had multiple agent offers, the book sold in December, and it hit the shelves a year and half later.
I think of the Willamette Writers Conference as the event that kickstarted my writing career. So I was thrilled to be back at the conference as faculty this year, teaching a class on writing action scenes, and I was especially honored to be named this year’s Up and Coming Award winner. Thank you Willamette Writers. Already looking forward to next year’s conference.