Local author receives second book award

By Phil Cobb | May 21, 2023 |

SUBMITTED BY JASON OFFUTT
Local author Jason Offutt’s book “The Girls in the Corn” won the 2023 Benjamin Franklin Gold Award.

MARYVILLE, Mo. — For the second year in a row, a local author and Northwest Missouri State University journalism instructor has been awarded an Independent Book Publisher Association Benjamin Franklin Gold Award.

Jason Offutt’s horror novel, “The Girl in the Corn,” which is published with CamCat Books, received the award last year for the audiobook version of the book and this year received the award for the writing itself. This is the first major award Offutt has won, though his book, “So You Had to Build a Time Machine,” placed second in this competition a few years ago.

“The audiobook was part of a trained voice actor doing the voices,” Offutt said. “So, it was the story, but it was also him. This was all me, so it means a bit more to me than the other one does.”

When writing the book, Offutt said he wanted to include the stuffy and scary feelings that corn fields can exude, aspects of living on a farm — and he wanted to have fairies in the story.

“My youngest daughter was watching a whole bunch of Tinkerbell movies on Disney+ and in researching the books I wrote on the paranormal, I know that traditional fairies, all around the world, they’re bad. They’re nasty. They’re mean, so I wanted to incorporate all of that into one.”

“The Girl in the Corn” follows the character Thomas Cavanaugh after he has a traumatic experience following fairies into a cornfield and having an encounter that threatens the fairies’ world and Cavanaugh’s sanity. Years later, the character runs into a young woman and man he realized he had met when he received psychiatric care following the cornfield encounter. He wonders if he was meant to cross paths with the pair to save the fairies and their own world or if they aren’t who they claim to be.

Offutt has published 16 books throughout his career as an author in various genres and topics including horror, non-fiction books about people and paranormal experiences, a humor travel log documenting a journey from Missouri to Canada, a parody book about killing monsters with household items and more.

Read more about “The Girl in the Corn” and Offutt’s other books on his website, jasonoffutt.com. His books may be purchased on Amazon, from Barnes & Noble and other bookstores through camcatbooks.com.