Welcome to The Nano Watt Hall of Fame, a thrilling collection of interviews featuring the grand winners of our annual Nano Watt Awards. Delve into the creative lives of our brightest stars as they share their stories of triumph, and their unyielding...
Meet Leigh Vann (@LVann26). Thirty with the heart of twenty she juggles an animated life with two young kids, a third on the way, two cats, and a hardworking husband. Yet, amidst the chaos, her heart remains abundantly full.
Her novel 'The Love I Found' won the grand winner prize in The 2023 NanoWatt Awards, in the New Adult Category and follows the tumultuous yet touching love story of Emilia Gillen and Cal Jones.
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Emilia Gillen longs to feel a sense of permanence after a lifetime of moving from one foster home to the next. She prefers to keep her head down and blend in, but when the brooding eyes of her new, mysterious foster brother keep looking her way, she doesn't mind the attention. But Cal Jones isn't the only one who notices her... The leering eyes of their perverse foster father make Emilia's skin crawl. To ensure her safety, Cal convinces her that they need to make a run for it.
But soon the teenagers find themselves out of options, causing them to accept help from a nefarious group in exchange for Cal's cooperation. While Cal falls deeper into the dangerous lifestyle of crime and the alluring world of drugs, Emilia realizes that the one she has deemed as her hero may be the one who needs saving.
Will the love she found be enough to reach through the prison of self-loathing that Cal has caged himself in, or will it be what ruins her?
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How does it feel to be a grand winner of the 2023 Nano Watt Awards? Were you confident that you would make it this far in the competition?
It feels pretty great! Generally, when I enter awards I do it for feedback purposes, and there's always the hope that I will hook the judge and gain another reader. I knew The Nano Watt did not plan to give feedback in the form of a rubric but knowing it was a round based award that would go over a good portion of my book made me excited about it. While other awards give feedback on the first 5-10 chapters, I feel The Nano Watt reflected the judge(s) opinion on my plot in its entirety (or close to it) which made being the New Adult Grand Winner feel like an extra special accomplishment. As for my confidence in making it this far, I was cautiously optimistic once my book was added to The Longlist Highlights reading list. But I knew I was up against some stiff competition so I was still humbly surprised when The Love I Found was announced as the Grand Winner.
In your own words what is your winning entry about?
The Love I Found is the story of two foster teens that break away from a scary situation to set out on their own... only to find that becoming responsible for each other isn't necessarily the easiest or safest choice.
