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RPLA Showcase: SR Staley

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Welcome to the RPLA Showcase

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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 2016 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.

2016 Published Historical Fiction

Tortuga Bay by SR Staley

SR Staley won First Place in the Published Historical Fiction category. In Tortuga Bay, Isabella and her trusted quarter master are chased by Spanish pirate hunters into Port-au-Prince where they become embroiled in a nascent slave revolt and a clash of colonial empires.

Click the link to read a sample:

Excerpt from Tortuga Bay

Ready to read the rest of the book?

Click the link to purchase Tortuga Bay from Amazon Smile and support the Florida Writers Foundation.*

Q & A with SR Staley

Q: Where do you get your story ideas?

A: My story ideas usually emerge from reflections on real-life experiences or events. For example, I was unsatisfied with my response to my daughter’s question about whether Santa Claus actually existed, so I tried to image a reality based analogue to the myth. The result was St. Nic, Inc. (which earned 2nd place in Published Mainstream/Literary Fiction in the 2015 RPLA). My series of middle grade novels on bullying and school violence emerged from reflection on martial arts training and my son’s classes. The Pirate of Panther Bay series, of which Tortuga Bay is the second novel, was inspired by a prompt from a literary agent asking for a manuscript for a young-adult historical romance which merged my childhood love for sailing, inspiration from the C.S. Forester’s Horatio Hornblower books, and a naive interest in pirates inspired by the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disney World as a ten year old.

Q: Anything in particular about your award-winning RPLA entry that you’d like to share?

A: For me, Tortuga Bay represents much more than a labor of love or passion. This novel is my fifth, and it represents a long-term commitment to writing fiction. Tortuga Bay probably also represents my most mature writing to date, in large part because of the creative risks I was willing to take. I really used this manuscript to hone my skills as a novelist and push myself as a craftsmen. Isabella, the lead character, is very much a woman with 21st century sensibilities despite being born a woman and a slave in the 18th century Caribbean. Juan Carlos, her lover,  is very much an 18th century man who is learning to accept and cope with a headstrong, determined woman (and pirate, no less). By pushing myself as a storyteller, I had to fully embrace the conflicts these different personalities create and resolve the paradox of their relationship. As a result, Isabella has a new level of depth and, Juan Carlos has a trajectory very different from the one I had originally envisioned for the book as well as the series.

Q: Who do you credit with inspiring your writing?

A: My former mother-in-law, Ann, who lamented the paucity of good young-adult fiction when she was working as a middle-school librarian. I naively jumped at the challenge, even though I had read very little YA fiction at the time and didn’t recognize much of what I had read as a teenager as YA. My focus on YA ended up as a bit of a creative straightjacket for my first novels, but it gave me a foundation that has defined the essence of my voice as a novelist—A cross-genre action/adventure writer with a young adult heart.

Q: Any tips for new writers?

A: My success with my most recent books is the result of persevering in the shadows for years. I believe wholeheartedly in the mantra write, write, and write more. Practice doesn’t make perfect, but it’s the only way writers get better. I would add two additional thoughts. First our writing improves through candid, hard nosed critiques from people we know and trust. New writers shouldn’t avoid being vulnerable with their writing if it’s shared with people they trust and respect. I can actually see the places in Tortuga Bay that improved because I listened and acted on the comments from my critique group. Second, don’t be afraid to fail. Failure is part of learning. Many writers talk about their first manuscript still buried in a drawer someplace because it was too terrible to publish. That bad manuscript is incredibly important because reflective and ambitious writers recognize its value as part of the learning process and establishing a creative platform for greater stories and more awesome characters down the road.


Thank you for sharing, Sam, and congratulations! Visit his website: www.srstaley.com

*When you purchase this book from the Amazon Smile link provided, you are promoting literacy throughout Florida. You pay no extra cost for the book. The Amazon Smile Foundation will donate 0.5% of the purchase price to Florida Writers Foundation.

For more details about FWF, visit www.floridawritersfoundation.com

For more details about Amazon Smile, visit https://smile.amazon.com/gp/aw/ch/about

Follow Bria Burton:

Blogger at St. Pete Running Company

Award-winning author Bria Burton lives in St. Petersburg with her wonderful husband and two wild pets. They will soon welcome a baby boy (their first) in November 2017. Her fiction has appeared in over twenty anthologies and magazines. Her novelette, The Running Girls, is a 2017 Royal Palm Literary Award Finalist. Her novella, Little Angel Helper, won a 2016 RPLA. She has earned two First Place RPLAs for unpublished manuscripts. While she writes, her dog and cat do their best to distract her, which is why they star in her family-friendly short story collection, Lance & Ringo Tails. She's a blogger and customer service manager at St. Pete Running Company. As a member of the Florida Writers Association, she leads the St. Pete chapter and serves on the statewide FWA Board. She's also a member of the Alvarium Experiment, a by-invitation-only consortium of outstanding authors who created The Prometheus Saga, Return to Earth, and The Masters Reimagined anthologies. Website www.briaburton.com
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