Welcome to the RPLA Showcase
Each year at the Royal Palm Literary Award Banquet, authors experience the joy of earning accolades for all the hard work that is often done in the privacy of the home with little to no recognition. Our goal is to showcase the best of the best at the 2015 Royal Palm Literary Awards and provide First Place winners with a well-deserved spotlight. Not only are we recognizing extraordinary talent, but we’re giving readers an opportunity to sample excerpts from the winning stories.
2015 Unpublished Mainstream/Literary
Lie Very Still by C.J. Godwin
C.J. Godwin won First Place in the Unpublished Mainstream/Literary category. In Lie Very Still, set on the fringe of the Everglades, a young woman falls in love with a married painter. When an Indian from her past threatens, she has to fight for her life.
Click the link to read a sample:
Q & A with C.J. Godwin
Q: Where do you get your story ideas?
A: Inspired by the hurricane year of 2004, Lie Very Still recalls a childhood friendship, one lousy job, and a trip into deep southern Florida where hardly nobody lives.
Q: Anything in particular about your award-winning RPLA entry that you’d like to share?
A: “It was not a noise that woke Willa, but the absence of silence.” That’s my favorite quote from the book. Willa is a young woman who falls in love with a married painter, and an Indian from her past returns to challenge her future. Lie Very Still breaks the rules to deliver the unexpected—it’s the story of good and evil, and the friendship which lies between.
Q: Who do you credit with inspiring your writing?
A: Lie Very Still would have never begun if it weren’t for Brady Udall’s novel, Miracle Life of Edgar Mint. The style and appreciation for Florida are greatly borrowed from Marjory Stoneman Douglas, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, and a little rare book called Florida’s Vanishing Era by Eleanor H. D. Pearse (which my Great Aunt Nancy Driskell was good enough to put into my possession). Also influential was William H. Marquardt’s interview with Garfield Beckstead in The Archaeology of Useppa Island. The facts, the fiction, the beautiful language, and the Florida backdrop intermingle to make the story, Lie Very Still.
Q: Any tips for new writers?
A: Believe that the scenes are all there and can be logically arranged. Then lose faith in your belief so the magic of writing can take place.
