Saturday, April 10, 2010

Florida Book Award Banquet


The Florida Book Awards in conjunction with the Florida Library Association held the fourth annual Florida Book Awards banquet this past Thursday.  They changed venues this year, and the event took place at the Rosen Plaza on International Drive in Orlando. Although the crowd was smaller than in previous years, we enjoyed the company.

We hooked up with some old friends from Florida State University, and met some recent friends from the University of South Florida.  We even made some new friends from the Burton Memorial Library in Plant City, and from WMNF 85.5 radio in Tampa.

Jack E. Davis, the gold medal winner in Florida Nonfiction, sat at our table.  He won the award for his book An Everglades Providence: Marjory Stoneman Douglas and the American Environmental Century.  He seemed a bit wary of the Everglades reclamation project currently underway.  Since the project calls for continuous management with canals and dikes, how can it be considered restoration?

Another gold winner at the awards was Glynn Marsh Alam.  She won in the Popular Fiction Category for her book, Moon Water Madness.    She is a native of the Florida Panhandle, and graduated from Florida State University.  She lived for a while in California, but has since returned to the area.  Her stories take place in the Panhandle region. Moon Water Madness is her seventh book in the Luanne Fogarty mystery series.  I like her stories, but of course I am biased after living almost twenty years in the area she writes about.

The Florida Book Awards Banquet is always a good time, and offers an opportunity to chat with authors and interesting people.  We spend more time visiting, chatting and meeting new people than on ceremony.  It is a fun activity for writers and readers.

Thursday, April 8, 2010

Carpebiblio Blog update


After a month long absence in which I have been posting else where, I will be posting at this blog once again.  I have been writing book reviews and sports articles for blogcritics.com.  I have also begun to write embedded systems articles at Technorati.com.

A while back I published a blog here on Tips for Aspiring Writers talking about trying to write a 1000 words a day five days a week.   I am currently writing about 5,000 words a week but I have to write everyday to achieve this amount.


I am also working on two short stories.  I will be submitting Tim’s Chair this month to the Florida Writer’s Association “A Slice of Life” contest.  I will be submitting Mind Ghosts to another contest in the fall.  Tim’s Chair depicts a moment in time in Kirby’s life.  He has been on a downward spiral since he caught his ex-girlfriend cheating on him.  An associate offers him a chance to grab his life back.  Kirby needs to make a decision.  Mind Ghosts is a story of dementia from the viewpoint of the person with dementia.

This weekend I will be posting an article to Carpebiblio Blog concerning the Florida Book Awards.  We are off to Orlando tonight to attend the Florida Library Association’s banquet honoring the recipients of the Florida Book Award.

Until this weekend happy reading and writing.