Local author’s thriller wins literary excellence award
Amarillo author Rick Treon’s novel “Divided States” has won the 2022 PenCraft Award for Literary Excellence in Terrorist Thrillers, according to the organization’s website.
Treon will receive the award during a ceremony on April 3 at the Golden Nugget Hotel and Casino in Lake Charles, Louisiana.
“I’m honored and grateful every time one of my novels receives recognition like this,” Treon said. “It’s a special feeling.”
His 2020 release “Let the Guilty Pay” also earned a second-place finish awards’suspense category. The organization considered books released during the COVID-19 pandemic in addition to those published in 2021.
Treon’s third published novel, “Divided States” (Black Rose, June 2021) was also nominated for the 2022 Silver Falchion Award and Best Thriller Book Awards in their respective thriller categories. His sophomore novel “Let the Guilty Pay” (Fawkes Press, July 2020) was previously a finalist for the Silver Falchion Award in suspense and 2019 Writers’ League of Texas Manuscript Contest in the thriller/action-adventure category.
This is Treon’s second PenCraft win. His debut, “Deep Background” (Black Rose, December 2018), won the 2020 PenCraft Award for Literary Excellence in Suspense.
Treon was also named 2021 Writer of the Year by the Texas High Plains Writers, a nonprofit organization and the oldest writing club in the state, according to a news release.
A graduate of West Texas High School in Stinnett and the University of Texas at Austin, Treon is a former managing editor of the Amarillo Globe-News and Kerrville Daily Times.
He is now the editorial director of Amarillo-based Blue Handle Publishing and Book Puma Author Services. Treon is also a writing instructor and public speaker who recently presented for the Lubbockbased Caprock Writers and Illustrators Alliance. He will also be featured on an authors panel this year at ThrillerFest in New York, the largest annual convention in the country for thriller writers.
For more information, visit ricktreon.com.
This article originally appeared on Amarillo Globe-News: Local author Rick Treon’s thriller wins literary excellence award
