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Sunday, October 5, 2014

31 Days of Horror-- Day 5: James Herbert Award for Horror

For the first time in many years, there is a new major horror award, and I have updated my Horror Awards page to reflect this.

The James Herbert Award for Horror: 
Pan Macmillan Announces The James Herbert Award for Horror
For anyone who loves horror there are a couple of stalwarts of the genre that you won’t have missed reading—and James Herbert is one of them. With novels like The Rats, The Fog, and The Secret of Crickley Hall, he kept a whole generation and more enthralled with his supernatural stories of things that went ‘bump’ in the middle of the night. As a teenager he was one of my stable of horror authors along with Stephen King and I was so thrilled to have been able to meet him a few times after joining Pan Macmillan. We were all devastated by his loss last year…
I didn’t plan to write horror; it just poured out of me’ –James Herbert
To celebrate the life and career of one of the world’s best and most loved horror writers, Pan Macmillan and the estate of James Herbert have announced the launch of The James Herbert Award for Horror Writing.
The announcement coincides with the fortieth anniversary of the first publication of The Rats for which Pan Macmillan will be releasing special anniversary paperback and collectors’ hardback editions … which will contain an exclusive new introduction by Neil Gaiman.
The prize, which will be awarded annually, aims to discover and publicise a new generation of horror authors working today and celebrate the boldest and most exciting talent in the genre. The winning author will receive a cheque for £2,000 and a specially-designed commemorative statuette.
The inaugural award will be open to horror novels written in English and published in the UK and Ireland between 1st January 2014 and 31st December 2014. Entries should be submitted to Pan Macmillan via their online submission form by 1st October 2014.
More information is available on the TorUK blog, and the submission guidelines for the James Herbert Award can be found here.
I am so excited about this award and the reissue of The Rats that I already have a copy on order AND I will be featuring the re-release of The Rats with the new forward by Neil Gaiman in the October 15th issue of Library Journal.

So, look for the announcement of this award winner in 2015 and think about replacing your worn out Herbert horror novels.  He really was a master who captured the very best of what pulp horror has to offer.

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