Sunday, October 25, 2009

This Year, I Did It!

Last night was the awards banquet for the annual Royal Palm Literary Awards. This is the biggest of the competitions run by the Florida Writers Association, and the winners are always announced at their major annual conference. Participants submit three copies of the first fifty pages of a complete short story, poem, essay, or novel in a variety of categories. If the first three judges give the piece enough critique points, you make it to the finals and submit the entire manuscript to a fourth judge. The tallied points determine honorable mention, second, and first place winners.

Last year I made the finals, but didn't win an award. I will say, however, that the critique sheets I got back from the contest were helpful in making revisions.

This year I won first place! (I guess all the revisions paid off.)

The banquet was held at a very nice hotel in Lake Mary, Florida. They even had a red carpet for the winners to walk down in order to receive their awards. I will confess that as they called honorable mention and second place I really didn't think I had a chance. I knew some of my competition, one of whom had beaten me last year.

When they DID call the title of my novel, I actually didn't recognize it. My husband was cheering beside me, and I couldn't figure out why. The reason was because they used the novel's full name, which is AGENCY FILES--ASSASSIN'S NIGHTMARE. AGENCY FILES is the title of the series, and ASSASSIN'S NIGHTMARE is the title of the individual book in the series. I haven't heard it referred to that way out loud. Everyone just calls it ASSASSIN, or ASSASSIN'S NIGHTMARE, so it took a few seconds for me to realize they had called for me! Pretty funny, actually.

At least I managed to make it down the carpet without tripping or anything. We sat in the very back of the hall, so I had the longest walk. I collected my trophy (very pretty, an open book with the name of the award, the year, my name, first place, and the name of the book engraved on it). Then I had to pose for multiple pictures, and a big group shot with all the winners at the end of the evening which will go on the Florida Writers Association website.

Lots of fun!

15 comments:

Phebe H.L. said...

Awesome Mrs. Iriarte!! I hope you had a bunch of fun!!!! And great job on winning!!!! I can't believe my TEACHER won FIRST place in the competition!!! Congrats Mrs. Iriarte!!! =)

-Phebe

Lisa Iriarte said...

Thanks Phebe! Wow, checking my blog on a Sunday! I'm impressed.

Phebe H.L. said...

Hehe... I just don't want to do anything at the last minute!

Congrats again!

Sarah N Fisk said...

yay! It was great meeting you yesterday and I'm very happy for you.

I had breakfast this morning with the guy who won last year! :-)

Lisa Iriarte said...

Cool! Glad to see you here. If you like, follow me on Twitter. I'm LisaIri.

Christa said...

This is awesome. I am so glad all of your hard work paid off. Congrats. Good hopes for your book.
:)

Nathalia said...

I am so glad you won Mrs. Iriarte you shouldnt even need anything else whoever is an agent would come running over you so they can represent your book i cant wait until you get your book published i am going to try so hard to be the first person to buy it :)

Andy said...

Great Job Mrs. Iriarte

holly said...

glad you finally got that award! congrats! wow Mrs.Iriarte...you're on a role!

Luis said...

Wow! I am very happy for you. I hope to someday read your books!

Ryan said...

Good job mrs iriarte
well done for not tripping

Shannon said...

Woohoo! I look forword to someday reading your published books!

Anonymous said...

Wow! Mrs.Iriarte,you are so talented. I am very lucky to have you as a teacher! Congrats! :)

_Alaina_

Anonymous said...

WOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! you just keep winning awards you are so awesome!!!!! i can not wait until you publish your books my mom said if you publish she will buy every single one of them

Johan said...

Last year u realy did do it you one contests and got a agent good job