Brooksville Writers’ Group Memeber Wins Literary Award
December 5, 2011
Johanna Bolton’s historical romance, the LADY & THE PIRATE (renamed THE PIRATE’S LADY) won the 2011 Royal Palm Literary Award for Best 2011 Romance Novel.
According to Bolton, the novel was first conceived when she was 16 years old and fascinated with sailboats, and the sea, and a TV show called “The Buccaneers.” She dragged the manuscript around with her for the next 50 years, adding to the story now and then. Finished just last summer, Bolton entered the book in the Royal Palm competition on a whim. She only learned she had won on Sunday morning (10/22) while she was appearing at Necronomicon Science Fiction Convention in Tampa, Florida, where she was a guest speaker. Primarily a science fiction and mystery author, Bolton had no plans to ever write a romance, but this tale was so different that it demanded being told.
The book’s title has been changed. It was a difficult decision, Bolton admitted, “but I don’t think it will make that much of a difference … the manuscript is still the same. However, I called the story THE PIRATE’S LADY since … well since the books inception. But when I typed the name into Amazon’s search engine, I came up with plus two pages of Pirate Lady’s. The new title, LADY AND THE PIRATE, only raised one other book.” And some early readers, she added, liked this new title better.
You can get a copy of LADY AND THE PIRATE aka THE PIRATE’S LADY as a treebook at http://jmbolton.com. The story is also available in ebook formats from most sources (amazon, Barnes & Noble, Smashwords).
