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Naples author’s ‘Mister Manners’ receives national recognition

The Annual 2022 Florida Authors and Publishers Association President’s Book Awards recognized Mister Manners by J.C. Bruce in the category of Mysteries/ Suspense as a Silver medal winner.

Hosted by the Florida Authors and Publishers Association, this prestigious national award is open to books published between 2020 and 2022. The judges for this national competition are librarians, educators, and publishing professionals.

“The FAPA President’s Book Award exists to promote excellence in the publishing industry by recognizing talented contemporary authors who put both heart and soul into their work. FAPA is proud to be a champion of authors and publishers going the extra mile to produce books of excellence in every aspect,” said Pat Stanford, a past president of FAPA.

Mister Manners is a 373-page novel available as a trade paperback, hardcover, eBook and audiobook published by Tropic Press, an online news service and book publishing company based in Naples. It is the fifth in the series of Strange Files mysteries, which recount the adventures of America’s only fulltime reporter of news of the weird, Alexander Strange. The book previously was honored in the Royal Palm Literary Awards where it also earned the Silver Medal. Another book in the series, Strange Currents, won the Gold Medal.

“We are proud to announce this year’s winners who truly embody the excellence this award was created to celebrate. Their works are representative of creative storytelling, bold concepts, and innovative ideas which make the President’s Book Awards so well respected by librarians and those in the publishing industry. We salute all our winners for their fine work.” said FAPA’s Immediate Past President Renee Garrison.

The Florida Authors and Publishers Association is an organization for authors, publishers, illustrators, editors, printers, and other professionals involved in the publishing industry. It focuses on providing the highest quality of information, resources, and professional development to members min and others interested in the writing and publishing profession.

Mr. Bruce’s career includes journalist-in-residence at Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio, and, earlier in his newspaper career, he served as an editor, managing editor, or reporter at, among other places, the Naples Daily News, the Dayton Daily News, thee Austin American-Statesman, the Longview News-Journal, the Mesa Tribune, the Miami Herald, the Palm Beach Post, the St. Petersburg Times (now the Tampa Bay Times) and the Tampa Times (now deceased). He even served as the press secretary in Washington, D.C. for a congressman who ended up getting indicted and sent to prison.

For more about J.C. Bruce and his books, visit www.jcbruce.com. ¦

Local author, J.C. Bruce, wins prestigious Florida Literary Award

The Florida Writers Association, the state’s largest and most prestigious literary organization, has announced that Naples journalist and author J.C. Bruce has won both gold and silver medals in the 2021 Royal Palm Literary Awards.

“Strange Currents: A Story From the Files of Alexander Strange” won first place in the category honoring the best-published mysteries in Florida. Strange Currents is the fourth of a fivebook series authored by J.C. Bruce and published by Tropic Press.

Mr. Bruce’s draft of “Mister Manners,” which at contest deadline had yet to be printed, won the silver medal for best unpublished manuscript, also in the mystery category. Mister Manners has now been published and is available as an ebook, paperback, hardback and audiobook.

The awards were announced at the Florida Writers Association’s recent remote awards ceremony. The annual competition, in its 20th year, received 577 submissions.

“Even in these difficult times, writers are writing — and marvelously,” said Chris Coward, Royal Palm Literary Awards chairperson.

In all, the competition covered 27 adult genres and 5 Youth genres, with published and unpublished entries considered separately.

J.C. Bruce is a journalist-turned-author living in Naples. During his newspaper career he served as a reporter, editor, and columnist at a variety of publications including the Miami Herald, The Palm Beach Post, the St. Petersburg Times (now the Tampa Bay Times), the Dayton Daily News, the Austin American Statesman, and the Naples Daily News.

The five books in The Strange Files series, in addition to Strange Currents and Mister Manners include The Strange Files, Get Strange, and Florida Man: A Story from the Files of Alexander Strange. Alexander Strange, the protagonist in this series, is the world’s only full-time reporter of news of the weird living aboard his converted fishing trawler in Goodland, Florida.

The Florida Writers Association, 1,600 members strong and growing, is a nonprofit 501(c)(6) organization that supports the state’s established and emerging writers. Membership is open to the public.

The Royal Palm Literary Awards competition is a service of the Florida Writers Association established to recognize excellence in its members’ published and unpublished works while providing objective and constructive written assessments for all entrants.

For additional information, visit the FWA website at floridawriters.org, where you’ll also find more about the RPLA and the complete list of 2021 winners. J.C. Bruce may be contacted at [email protected]. ¦

Second Acts

Artists are loners of sorts, simply by the nature of the work: Fine photography or great writing, for example, are not team sports.

So now Jeff Bruce works alone in the relative silence of his study after a career spent mostly in the cacophony of once-upon-a-time newsrooms. There, the crescendo of clattering, clicking, conversing, exchanging and shouting, seasoned with epithets, raucous laughter or sometimes dead silence broken by escaped tears or a muffled sob reached marching band levels of noise on any given afternoon before press time. Reporters can see a lot of bad news up close and personal, and he has.

In his study, working on the sixth in a series of popular and award-winning novels, he’s now completed his third in a series of retirements.

Mr. Bruce retired twice from the newspaper business and once from a three-year stint as a journalism teacher at a university, leading him to this conclusion about the standard American event: “I’m a miserable failure when it comes to retirement.”

His careers, begun at age 19 as a reporter, include teaching journalism at Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio, after his first stint in newspapers, then returning to news and adding to his impressive list of employers in that business, before stepping out forever.

Unless he returns someday.

Ultimately, he had worked “as an editor, managing editor, or reporter at, among other places, the Naples Daily News, the Dayton Daily News, the Austin American-Statesman, the Longview News-Journal, the Mesa Tribune, the Miami Herald, The Palm Beach Post, the St. Petersburg Times (now the Tampa Bay Times) and The Tampa Times (now deceased),” says his friend, Eric Strachan.

Mr. Strachan was senior managing editor at the Naples Daily News when Mr. Bruce was a managing editor, and now serves as editor of the Naples Florida Weekly.

In retirement, 1,000 words a day is Mr. Bruce’s self-imposed deadline requirement while writing the first draft of one of his 90,000-word novels in the “Strange Files” books, a series that has proven both popular and award winning, in part because they give his readers a place of refuge and learning.

He knows a lot, according to his friends.

Ernest Hemingway claimed he did 500 words a day and never missed a sunrise in his writing years — which, given his level of drinking, may or may not have been true.

Jeff Bruce’s level of fitness and work discipline, on the other hand, leads no one to doubt his ability to put out. Every morning he and his wife, Sandy, go for a long walk; they also belong to a gym where they work out regularly.

“If I don’t do that, I can’t sit down for four or five hours and write,” he acknowledges.

He feels fortunate to be able to work that hard in retirement.

“I’ve told people this for years: For most, retirement is a death sentence. If you don’t have something you’re engaged in, what’s the point?

“But to say something like that means you’re privileged. If you were pounding nails into a roof all your life, you’d be worn out.”

For the work of books to be solid, or journalism, you have to have great editors.

Mr. Bruce has three, he says: his wife, Sandy, “who knows where and when to kill my darlings” in the fiction, and their children, Logan and Kacey. Logan is copy editor on all his books, and artist and designer Kacey helps the finished products shine for readers.

In the 70 to 90 age range of American living, Mr. Bruce concludes, “you have fewer days ahead of you than behind, so what are you going to leave that’s valuable for others?”

He offers this sage three-retirements-going-on-four advice: “Re-engage and be good citizens. The most important job is the job of being a citizen.

“If you’ve lived as long as we have, especially if we’re honest with ourselves, we’ve made tons of mistakes. The benefit of them is you can learn from them and share what you know with others. Retirement doesn’t mean you have to disengage from the community.”

Instead, he says, “It’s a chance.”

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