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.
TWO FIRST PLACE AWARDS
Dianna Dann Narciso, writing as Dianna Dann and Dana Trantham, won two First Place awards in the Published Women’s Fiction category and the Published Chapter Book category.
2015 Published Women’s Fiction
Always Magnolia by Dianna Dann
In Always Magnolia, Jack Beaumont has forgotten everything…even Magnolia. Wanting him back, she reweaves his life for him. But not every bad thing can be fixed by telling a different story.
Click the link to read a sample:
2015 Published Chapter Book
Wayward Cat Finds a Home by Dana Trantham
In Wayward Cat Finds a Home, Wayward Cat goes home from the adoption center with Miss Lady, one of the volunteers. But she already has a cat. Can Wayward convince Squeakers to let him stay?
Click the link to read a sample:
Excerpt from Wayward Cat Finds a Home
Q & A with Dianna Dann Narciso, writing as Dianna Dann and Dana Trantham
Q: Where do you get your story ideas?
A: Most of my ideas just pop into my brain as tiny inklings—a character, a line of dialogue, a setting—and then as I think about them, they expand and tumble and coalesce into something coherent and workable. I write in several genres under several pen names so that all of my crazy ideas can come to fruition. Other ideas are born pragmatically. I noticed an author at a book fair selling a lot of copies of a book with a picture of a cat on the cover and my husband told me it was the cat. “You need a book with a cat on the cover,” he said. So, I wrote two. Wayward Cat Finds a Home and Zombie Cats are my bestselling books at festivals.
Q: Anything in particular about your award-winning RPLA entries that you’d like to share?
A: Always Magnolia started out as a young adult paranormal story. Then I dropped the paranormal. Then I dropped the young adult. I wrote forty thousand words with three different viewpoint characters and hated it! So I started over from scratch. I decided to trust the same process that brought Camelia to life—one first-person viewpoint—and let Magnolia just tell her story. I was surprised to find her telling her story to Jack, another character. I was instantly in love with it. I’m not sure if there is a lesson in there or not, about fools rushing in, perhaps. But I haven’t learned it.
The character of Squeakers in Wayward Cat Finds a Home is based on my enormous cat Squeakers. He actually got his name because whenever he jumps down from anything, he squeaks; but he really does pounce on the other cats and make them squeak, which is where I got the idea for the character. Also, Brandi Trantham, the illustrator, is my niece–she’s a wonderful artist and photographer.
Q: Who do you credit with inspiring your writing?
A: I’ve been writing forever it seems, from at least fifth grade when I wrote a short story for no reasons other than my own. I believe that writing was—and remains—my way of coping with reality. If anyone offered this option to me, I’ve forgotten; and I don’t recall ever reading any book in particular and suddenly deciding that was what I wanted to do. That being said, some of my work is inspired by others. Camelia, for example, was inspired by the death of Camelia Jo Hand in so far as it affected my childhood. The Kell Stone Prophecy books were inspired by my three sons.
Q: Any tips for new writers?
A: The publishing world is changed. No longer are gate-keepers deciding who is worthy and who is not. You have the right to publish. Your work is a reflection of you, just as any other art form is an expression of the artist’s mind and heart. You can take your work as seriously as you wish to, and no one else can force his terms or standards on you. Hone your craft, find your voice, and write your story your way. Only you can.
