Handsome and Hideous won gold (first place) in the Unpublished Fantasy category of the 2024 Royal Palm Literary Awards!

Hosted annually by the Florida Writers Association (FWA), RPLA is a highly regarded writing competition that celebrates excellence in writing across more than 20 genre categories for adults and 5 for youth. It’s a worthwhile contest because every entry receives scores and feedback on ten different aspects of writing (language, creativity, character, etc.) from two separate judges. Finalists receive feedback and scores from three judges.

The awards were announced at the Saturday evening banquet of Florida WritersCon 2024. I sat at a table with five other writers. None of us knew each other previously. It turned out to be quite the lucky table! Not only did we discover we were all finalists, we each won gold in our category.