Gun Runner wins Dragon Award

I was very happy to receive news that GUN RUNNER, the novel Larry Correia and I wrote together, just won the 2021 Dragon Award for Best Military Science Fiction or Fantasy Novel.

The Dragon Awards are a set of literary and media awards presented annually by Dragon Con in Atlanta, Georgia for excellence in various categories of science fiction, fantasy, and horror novels, movies, television, and games.

And the cool thing is that these awards are voted on by fandom, meaning thousands and thousands of folks voted.

Past winners have included authors such as Terry Pratchett, Brandon Sanderson, Rick Riordan, and Stephen King.

As stated in earlier posts, the seed came from Larry’s eleven-year-old son, Joe.

When Larry and I sat down to develop an idea for a workshop we were holding for Life, the Universe and Everything, a large annual writer’s conference in Provo, a number of years ago, Joe was listening in on the stairs.

We settled on a genre, and then Correia asked, “Hey Joe, what’s cool?”

Joe immediately popped up and said, “Giant robots, bandits, and murderers.”

“We looked at each other and said, ‘Dang, that IS cool.’”

Forty minutes later we had the key elements we needed for the story we’d use in the workshop. A number of years after that workshop, Baen Books wanted a collaboration from Larry, and that story was one of the first he thought of.

Larry and I are both frequently asked to present at writers conferences. And one of the tips each of us shares to new authors is to loosen up and have fun. One of the keys to writing an entertaining story is to simply ask, “What’s cool?” And go from there.

I’m thrilled and honored that those who voted selected Gun Runner for this award.