Category: fiction

BRAM STOKER AWARDS 2012 CEREMONY (2013)

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Bram Stoker Awards Ceremony

bram-stoker-awardThe livestream began, showing the HWA logo, slightly askew

Jeff Strand, the MC, introduced Rocky Wood, HWA president, and Lisa Morton, HWA vice-president. Lisa announced eleven categories, Lifetime Achievement award, the Specialty Press and the Silver Hammer Award, thanked the chairs, panels and webteam, and acknowledged platinum sponsors (Samhain publishing).

Lisa then thanked the convention sponsors:  Let the Dead Sleep by Heather Graham, Journalstone Press and Dark Regions Press.

The announcement of the next Bram Stoker Award banquet at WHC next May in Portland Oregon.

Now, on to the winners

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Superior Achievement in Poetry:

Linda Addison and Stephen M. Wilson – Dark Duet (NECON eBooks)

Bruce Boston and Gary William Crawford – Notes from the Shadow City (Dark Regions Press)

Michael Collings – A Verse to Horrors (Amazon Digital Services)

WINNER: Marge Simon – Vampires, Zombies & Wanton Souls (Elektrik Milk Bath Press)

Mary A. Turzillo – Lovers & Killers (Dark Regions)

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Stoker Award for Non-Fiction:

Michael Collings – Writing Darkness (CreateSpace)

Leslie S. Klinger – The Annotated Sandman, Volume 1 (Vertigo)

WINNER: Lisa Morton – Trick or Treat: A History of Halloween (Reaktion Books)

Kim Paffenroth and John W. Morehead – The Undead and Theology (Pickwick Publications)

Kendall R. Phillips – Dark Directions: Romero, Craven, Carpenter, and the Modern Horror Film (Southern Illinois University Press)

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Silver Hammer Award

Award to HWA volunteer: instituted in 1996 and decided by Board of Trustees.

TO: Charles Day of Evil Jester Press

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Anthology

WINNER: Mort Castle and Sam Weller – Shadow Show (HarperCollins)

Eric J. Guignard – Dark Tales of Lost Civilizations (Dark Moon Books)

Eric Miller – Hell Comes to Hollywood (Big Time Books)

Mark C. Scioneaux, R.J. Cavender, and Robert S. Wilson – Horror for Good: A Charitable Anthology (Cutting Block Press)

Stan Swanson – Slices of Flesh (Dark Moon Books)

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Collection

Jonathan Carroll – Woman Who Married a Cloud: Collected Stories (Subterranean Press)

JOINT WINNER: Mort Castle – New Moon on the Water (Dark Regions)

Elizabeth Hand – Errantry: Strange Stories (Small Beer Press)

Glen Hirshberg – The Janus Tree (Subterranean Press)

JOINT WINNER: Joyce Carol Oates – Black Dahlia and White Rose: Stories (Ecco)

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Richard Laymon Presidents Award – for service to the HWA

Jim Chambers

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Screenplay

Jane Goldman – The Woman in Black (Cross Creek Pictures)

Sang Kyu Kim – The Walking Dead, “Killer Within” (AMC TV)

Tim Minear – American Horror Story: Asylum, “Dark Cousin”

Gary Ross, Suzanne Collins, and Billy Ray – The Hunger Games (Lionsgate, Color Force)

WINNER: Joss Whedon and Drew Goddard – The Cabin in the Woods (Mutant Enemy Productions, Lionsgate)

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Specialty Press Award

Centipede Press – Jerad Walters

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Short Fiction

Bruce Boston – ‘Surrounded by the Mutant Rain Forest’ (Daily Science Fiction)

Joe McKinney – ‘Bury My Heart at Marvin Gardens’ (Best of Dark Moon Digest, Dark Moon Books)

Weston Ochse – ‘Righteous’ (Psychos, Black Dog and Leventhall Publication)

John Palisano – ‘Available Light’ (Lovecraft eZine, March 2012)

WINNER: Lucy Snyder – ‘Magdala Amygdala’ (Dark Faith: Invocations, Apex Book Company)

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Long Fiction

Kealan Patrick Burke – Thirty Miles South of Dry County (Delirium Books)

Jack Ketchum and Lucky McKee – I’m Not Sam (Sinister Grin Press)

Joe McKinney and Michael McCarty – Lost Girl of the Lake (Bad Moon Books)

WINNER: Gene O’Neill – The Blue Heron (Dark Regions Press)

Norman Prentiss – The Fleshless Man (Delirium Books)

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Lifetime Achievement Award

Clive Barker and Robert R McCammon

Barker’s accepted by the vice president of his company

‘I’m not done yet. I have written, painted, and made movies for 30 years now, and I would like the same again. Thank you. I love you all’ – Clive Barker

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Graphic Novels

Cullen Bunn – The Sixth Gun Volume 3: Bound (Oni Press)

Terry Moore – Rachel Rising Vol. 1: The Shadow of Death (Abstract Studio)

Ravi Thornton – The Tale of Brin and Bent and Minno Marylebone (Jonathan Cape)

Peter J. Wacks and Guy Anthony De Marco – Behind These Eyes (Villainous Press)

WINNER: Rocky Wood, Lisa Morton and Greg Chapman – Witch Hunts: A Graphic History of the Burning Times (McFarland)

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Young Adult Novel

Libba Bray – The Diviners (Little Brown)

Barry Lyga – I Hunt Killers (Little Brown)

WINNER: Jonathan Maberry – Flesh & Bone (Simon & Schuster)

Michael McCarty – I Kissed A Ghoul (Noble Romance Publishing)

Maggie Stiefvater – The Raven Boys (Scholastic Press)

Jeff Strand – A Bad Day for Voodoo (Sourcebooks)

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First Novel

Michael Boccacino – Charlotte Markham and the House of Darkling (William Morrow)

Deborah Coates – Wide Open (Tor Books)

Charles Day – The Legend of the Pumpkin Thief (Noble YA Publishers LLC)

Peter Dudar – A Requiem for Dead Flies (Nightscape Press)

Richard Gropp – Bad Glass (Ballantine/Del Rey)

WINNER: L.L. Soares – Life Rage (Nightscape Press)

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Novel

Benjamin Kane Ethridge – Bottled Abyss (Redrum Horror)

John Everson – NightWhere (Samhain Publishing)

WINNER: Caitlín R. Kiernan- The Drowning Girl (Roc)

Bentley Little – The Haunted (Signet)

Joe McKinney – Inheritance (Evil Jester Press)

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All up, this was a wonderful ceremony, and I really wish I could have attended.

Congratulations to all the winners.

Midnight Echo Issue 9, Edited by Geoff Brown » This Is Horror

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Midnight Echo Issue 9, Edited by Geoff Brown (aka GN Braun)
eBook 150pp
Release Date: 31 May 2013

I edited this issue, and this review by UK site This is Horror is fantastic.

“Mythology is the theme for this issue of Midnight Echo, and it’s testament to the editors that the familiar and often overdone folklores are left out in favour of more obscure legends that will thrill, chill and enchant you.”

Read more via Midnight Echo Issue 9, Edited by Geoff Brown » This Is Horror.

Don’t make fun of renowned Dan Brown – Telegraph

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This is just brilliant…

‘Renowned author Dan Brown smiled, the ends of his mouth curving upwards in a physical expression of pleasure. He felt much better.
If your books brought innocent delight to millions of readers, what did it matter whether you knew the difference between a transitive and an intransitive verb?
“Thanks, John,” he thanked.
Then he put down the telephone and perambulated on foot to the desk behind which he habitually sat on a chair to write his famous books on an Apple iMac MD093B/A computer.
New book Inferno, the latest in his celebrated series about fictional Harvard professor Robert Langdon, was inspired by top Italian poet Dante. It wouldn’t be the last in the lucrative sequence, either. He had all the sequels mapped out. The Mozart Acrostic. The Michelangelo Wordsearch. The Newton Sudoku.’

Read more via Don’t make fun of renowned Dan Brown – Telegraph.

The Complicated Relationship Between Horror and Video Games | Gamer Girl Tay

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“Action plus co-op is fun, but scary? I’m not so sure.The room is dark, cold, and unusually calm. The once bare walkways are now riddled with blood and severed limbs. In the distance, a faint hum can be heard echoing throughout the metal encampment. Its repetition is a solid reminder that you are alone. A solitary light flickers in the corner, and shadows crisscross the floor. You take a step forward. Then pause. After a brief intermission your pace continues. With another wary stride you’ve nearly traversed the makeshift graveyard. As tensions begin to lift, the door beckons you to embrace its promise of safety…”

Read more via The Complicated Relationship Between Horror and Video Games | Gamer Girl Tay.

The Miles Franklin shortlist…

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“The Trust Company unveils all female shortlist for the 2013 Miles Franklin Literary AwardMiles of Reading Challenge to award prizes for best tweet-reviews of shortlisted novelsThe Trust Company, as Trustee, and the 2013 judging panel have today announced an all-female shortlist for this year’s Miles Franklin Literary Award.Regarded as Australia’s oldest and most prestigious literary prize, the 2013 Miles Franklin Award shortlist, announced today at the State Library of New South Wales, features five of Australia’s most talented female authors – including three first time novelists.The Miles Franklin Literary Award was established with proceeds from the estate of My Brilliant Career author, Stella Maria Sarah Miles Franklin, to support and encourage authors of Australian literature.The winner will be announced on Wednesday 19 June 2013 in Canberra at the National Library of Australia, and will receive $60,000 for the novel judged to be of the highest literary merit which “must present Australian life in any of its phases” in line with Miles Franklin’s wishes.Each of the five shortlisted authors will also receive $5,000 in prize money from the Copyright Agency’s Cultural Fund, a long term partner of the Miles Franklin Literary Award.The 2013 Miles Franklin Literary Award shortlist is:
Romy Ash – Floundering
Annah Faulkner – The Beloved
Michelle de Kretser – Questions of Travel
Drusilla Modjeska – The Mountain
Carrie Tiffany – Mateship with Birds”

via News.

LitChat Interview: Editor, Ellen Datlow – LitStack

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“Multiple award-winning editor Ellen Datlow has been editing science fiction, fantasy, and horror short fiction for almost thirty years. She was fiction editor of OMNI Magazine and SCIFICTION and has edited more than fifty anthologies, including the horror half of the long-running The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror.Ellen is currently tied with frequent co-editor Terri Windling as the winner of the most World Fantasy Awards in the organization’s history nine. She has also won with co-editor Windling a Bram Stoker Award for The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror #13, and with co-editors Kelly Link and Gavin J. Grant a Bram Stoker Award for The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror #17. She has also won the International Horror Guild Award for her anthologies The Dark and Inferno; the Shirley Jackson Award for Inferno and Poe; the Locus Award for Best Editor in 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, and 2009, and the Hugo Award for Best Editor 2002, 2005, and Best Editor Short Fiction 2008 and 2009. In addition, SCIFICTION won the Hugo Award for best Web site in 2005 as well as the Wooden Rocket Award as best online magazine for 2005.”

Read more via LitChat Interview: Editor, Ellen Datlow – LitStack.

My Latest Published Short!

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Hi everyone.

It’s my pleasure today to announce that the anthology For the Night is Dark, featuring my short story ‘His Own Personal Golgotha’, has been released in both print and Kindle format via Amazon.

Amazon Print
Amazon Kindle

Other ebook formats coming soon.
It’s one of my favourite stories so far, and the collection seems pretty good, from what I have so far.
Edited by Ross Warren.

Image

The Next Big Thing

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The Next Big Thing is a chain of book and author recommendations – so far including authors such as Sarah Pinborough, Paul Magrs, Adam Nevill and Angela Slatter.

What happens is an author answers ten questions about their new/next/most recent release before tagging another five authors who have to do the same thing one week later. And we all Facebook and/or tweet about it.

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And here are the questions:

1)      What is the working title of your next book?

Grey Man

2)      Where did the idea come from for the book?

After having Hammered: Memoir of an Addict published, I wanted to delve into the criminal underworld in a fictional sense. This has been done plenty of times before, so I looked for an angle that hadn’t been taken as often: a more unique hook. I thought about making the protagonist a Special Forces soldier, having read plenty of Andy McNab and Chris Ryan, so I combined the two and gave it a shot. I know that Special Forces and ex-military protagonists are always popular (Jack Reacher, Nick Stone, Alex Morgan etc.).

3)      What genre does your book fall under?

As stated above, it’s a crime thriller with military undertones.

4)      What actors would you choose to play the part of your characters in a movie rendition?

For the lead character of Graham ‘Grey’ Man, definitely Callan Mulvey, the actor who played Mark Moran in Underbelly Series One and ‘Mark Anthony ‘Snoddy’ Spencer in the more recent Bikie Wars series on Australian television.

For the main antagonist, I would have to go with Robert Rabiah, who played Paul ‘PK’ Kallipolitis in Underbelly Season One, for his excellent portrayal of unpredictability and insanity while still remaining threatening.

5)      What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?

Grey man is military/crime thriller that pits a Special Forces soldier against his brother’s killer, the criminal underworld and his own inner demons.

6)      Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

I will definitely be submitting to all the publishers. I like to take that road before I consider self-pubbing.

7)      How long did it take you to write the first draft of the manuscript?

It’s still a work-in-progress. I’m over a third through, with a full chapter summary at hand to help with structure as I write.

8)      What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?

Grey Man is like a cross between Underbelly, Jack Reacher/Lee Child and Andy McNab.

9)      Who or what inspired you to write this book?

People like Australian author Greig Beck, with his military thrillers, as well as the writers of the Underbelly and Bikie Wars television series, which are always extremely popular.

10)  What else about the book might pique the reader’s interest?

Grey Man is placed in two settings—Afghanistan during the opening phase of the War on Terror, and Melbourne, Australia, during the closing phases of the gangland war known as the Underbelly Murders. Both of these seem to be of interest at the moment, especially here in Australia.

Also of potential interest to readers, I have the experience to write the ‘underbelly’ side of things in a realistic and knowledgeable way, as a result of knowing and spending time with that dark-side of society for many years of my life.

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It seems I came in on the tail-end of this, and authors who haven’t take part are few and far between, at least in my network. Here are my three, rather than five:

Matthew Revert, Author of A Million Versions of Right, The Tumours Made Me Interesting and How to Avoid Sex

Jaime McDougall, Author of Echo Falls

James A. Moore, author of way too many books and film/TV tie-ins to name here

The rise of Australian horror and the Oz Horror Mini-con » This Is Horror

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We’ve had a first here in Australia this month.

Our first single-genre horror convention, the Oz Horror Mini-con was a pre-cursor to the main Oz Horror Con 2013, to be held in January in Melbourne. Previously we’ve had multi-genre conventions, not least of all AussieCon 4 and World Con back in 2010. That was a great year for horror in Australia, but World Con is still a sci-fi convention, with slight undertones of horror—provided, in this case, by the Australian Horror Writers Association, who held the Nightmare Ball, a costume ball with strong horror themes. The AHWA also held the 2010 Annual General Meeting of the association at the convention.

Now, along comes the Oz Horror Con.

via The rise of Australian horror and the Oz Horror Mini-con » This Is Horror.

Horror: a genre doomed to literary hell? | Books | guardian.co.uk

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“I’m convinced horror can raise its game. Our postmodern, capitalism-in-crisis, media-saturated world is ripe to describe it anew. Our very language seems to demand it. A mortgage, literally, is a death grip. Negative equity means being haunted by your own house. Corporations have legal personhood: they can be held responsible for criminal actions and claim “human” rights, but ironically they have no body. PR and political spin are referred to as “dark arts”. Your computer can be a zombie, “possessed” by a Trojan virus. Charley Douglass started to make canned laughter in 1953 – and its still in use. Every episode of Friends is accompanied by the cachinnation of the dead.”

via Horror: a genre doomed to literary hell? | Books | guardian.co.uk.