2026 Writing Mentorship Award (for unfinished or finished manuscripts)

Alma cannot cope with new widowhood, and the family minister takes her son, Robert, into his home. Reverend Charles helps the boy cope with grief and abandonment and teaches the family how to forgive and heal. It is the family that he will one day call his own.

Heather is forty two and desperate to escape her small, tight world controlled by Mother, so bravely finds a path to trust in the outside world. And in herself.

What happens when the world ends? Do we forge a new sense of camaraderie? Do we forgo our grudges at the armageddon's behest? My take is that the world's end won't be so spectacular after all. Ultimately, we'll be too consumed by our own reflections to notice the world crumbling around us.

In war-ruled Vael, sixteen-year-old Jorium has trained his whole life to kill, but when he alone can wield the forbidden Death Arts, the power sickens him. As his people face ruin, he must balance life and death while falling for a Life Artist boy he is certain hates him.

When poorly and lonely William befriends a scruffy, one-legged pigeon he names Jack, he doesn’t just find companionship, he discovers the courage to imagine, explore, and heal. From their bedroom-window adventures to the moment William must finally fly solo, their friendship changes his world.

A 66-year old Senior Engineer at ToneDef Communications learns he’s been the victim of social engineering and has inadvertently passed highly classified military radio specs to the enemy. Worse still, the attack was perpetrated by his long-time lover.

An inspirational story of love and war based on the true account of Makorongo, an East African serviceman who became a prisoner of war to the Japanese but was repatriated by Hans-Werner, his boyhood friend, before America bombed Tokyo in WWII and returned to the girl he left behind.

I AM DEAD. It is the only thing I know. Until my eyes open. And my first memory of this life is of being alone. There is stone. Light. And darkness. And what I have been left with. A sword. A shield. A scale. I have no memory of these things. And yet I know that they are mine.

John Hopkins, a young Irish-American, believes he is worth more than his humble upbringing, so he tries for a job working for George Pullman, industrialist, who is building a futuristic city for his workers. At first, the two men hit it off, but when Pullman’s workers try to unionize, the two men...

In 1936 Seattle, an actor is having the time of his free-wheeling life, until he meets the woman of his dreams, who won’t let anything get in the way of her acting career. When her twin brother turns up dead, together they unearth a horrific set of murders, and a perpetrator who is untouchable.

In Seattle, 1935, a young girl right out of high school, falls in love with a glamorous older man, entering into a world of elegant gowns, cocktails, and dancing. But when he grows more controlling and violent in his pro-Nazi group, the Silver Shirts, she runs away with the help of an actor (Max)...

In Walking Over Wet Paint, a guarded, emotionally reserved editor in vintage togs collides with a charming oncologist in the wake of her mother’s terminal illness, forcing both to re-evaluate their emotional defenses, past patterns, and ideas of permanence.

When a bitter and lonely magpie named Sorrow spends his days booing other birds, an unexpected friendship with a cheerful magpie named Joy teaches him that life is better when shared.