Fiction is my personal forte. The whole reason I made this page was because of the fiction that I write. To see more examples of that, you can visit my peronsal homepage. (It's mostly text, so don't expect it to be too pretty.)
I don't have too much advice to give to a 'budding young' author, except DO IT! I know that slogan is already taken by a major corporation, but it needs to be said. You will never be published if you don't get out and do it. It doesn't matter how badly something stinks, your style will improve with practice.
Just remember: In order to write about something, you have to create it first. Go into detail. If you can't do it all in your head, WRITE STUFF DOWN! Just blobs of sentences that only you can decipher will do more for your stories than you can imagine. In my stories, I actually made Role Playing Games(RPGs) to go along with all of my worlds. That way I already had the worlds, the details and everything. All I needed to keep in my head was the storyline.
Creation is everything. Before you write, create. That is the basis of all fiction. Start where you will, that doesn't matter. But as long as the world and the characters are created first, that will make or break your story. J.R.R. Tolkien started his world with the elvish language. Then he developed it, and eventually had Middle-Earth, the land of hobbits, elves, men and monsters.
Here is some of my work in fiction. These two are science fiction, but I do write other things.
Introduction to my unfinished story, Purge
Nova: A short story
I will have more of my work up soon, and in more genres than science fiction. Feel free to E-mail me with praise, criticism, indifference or pure hatred. I'd love to know what people think of my work.