Stafford resident and author Brett Lane was awarded first place in “The Novelist Writing Contest” for his e-book, “The Cain Children.”
Lane, who has been living in Stafford for five years, has worked as a law enforcement agent across the Northern Virginia area which helped to inspire his work.
“Many of the graphic images described in my book come from actual situations that I have had dealings with in my career, obviously changed to fit the story line,” Lane said.
Being inspired to write by his line of work, Lane began looking for story ideas and came across an iPad application called “The Novelist.” The app was advertising a writing contest, and Lane decided to give it a shot. To his surprise he made it through the first round.
“The first cut after the “auditions” [took] the group down to ten authors and the public [began] voting for their favorite each week. The writer with the least amount of votes [was] removed from the contest. Each week, the hosts of the contest [gave] the writers a topic to write about, a minimum and maximum number of words, and a dead line to turn it in,” Lane said of the contest.
After fierce competition, Lane won the competition. His prize was the publication of “The Cain Children.”
“I thought of an idea for a book while riding the VRE. ‘What if there were genes in us that made us turn out bad?’ That idea snowballed into my novel,” Lane said.
The novel is currently available on Amazon, and Lane has made plans to begin working on the second book in the series.
“My book is not for the faint of heart, but has received very good reviews and was named on the Amazon.com’s Best Seller in Horror list. My dream would be to become the next Stephen King.”
