Summer Scares Resources

Click here to immediately access the Summer Scares Resource page so that you can add some professionally vetted horror titles into your reading suggestions and fiction collections for all age levels.

Thursday, April 30, 2020

#HorrorForLibraries Giveaway #1: A Collection of Dreamscapes: Poetry by Christina Sng

Today I am kicking off a new series of #HorrorForLibraries giveaways. They will run every week, on Thursdays. And here is the best part, if you enter any week, you are eligible for ALL weeks.

The only rule is that you need to be affiliated with a public library in America or Canada currently. My rationale behind that is that I will be encouraging you to read these books and share them with patrons. While many of them are advanced reader copies that you cannot add to your collections, if you get the chance to read them, my hope is that you will consider ordering a copy for your library and give away the ARC away as a prize.

Okay now how to enter. If you are interested in being included in any giveaway at any time, you must email me at zombiegrl75 [at] gmail [dot] com with the subject line "#HorrorForLibraries." In the body of the email all you have to say is that you want to be entered and the name of your library.

Each entry will be considered for EVERY giveaway. I will randomly draw a winner on Fridays sometime after 5pm central. If you win, you are ineligible to win again. However, if you do not win, you carry over into the next week. There is NO NEED to reenter.

Why I am doing this? Well, one of the parts of my job that has gone away for the time being is my visits to libraries, library conferences, and library systems to provide general RA training. On all of those visits, I would  fill my suitcase with giveaway titles and they were mostly horror. It not only gave me a chance to give away books as prizes, but also it allowed me the opportunity to book talk horror even if that wasn't on the agenda.

Now that my services have transferred to 100% virtual, for the time being, I have an overflow of books in my house and less of chance to promote horror to the unsuspecting masses of library workers.

And thus my #HorrorForLibraries giveaway is born. This will be going on indefinitely, so the sooner you enter the better your chances. And this week is a great way to start because the book I have is a brand new finished copy that you can add to you collections ASAP.

A Collection of Dreamscapes by Christina Sng is a poetry collection every public library should own. Please click over to the regular blog where today I posted my review of the book and an interview with the author.

I also have a statement of support for the publisher, Raw Dog Screaming Press who is on my approved list of Independent Horror Publishers for Libraries. I would also like to thank them for providing the copy I am giveaway today.

So today is your chance to get in on the #HorrorForLibraries giveaway multi-week extravaganza on the ground floor. Follow the directions above and be entered to win this week, and every week thereafter.

All entries must be received by 5pm central on Fridays. I will draw a weekly winner from those eligible entries, let that person know via email that they won, and then announce the winner publicly the next Thursday when I announce the new giveaway. Again, if you win once, you are removed from the pool of entries, but if you do not win, you stay in the running.

Good luck! I can't wait to get more #HorrorForLibraries out into the wild.

Monday, April 20, 2020

2019 Bram Stoker Awards Results

The 2019 Bram Stoker Award winners were announced in a virtual presentation on HWA’s YouTube channel on April 18, 2020

I am posting the winners here on the horror blog so that the titles are searchable. Please go to the Bram Stoker Awards Homepage for more details on the awards, current winners, past winners, and more.
Superior Achievement in a Novel
Winner: Goingback, Owl – Coyote Rage (Independent Legions Publishing)
Also nominated:Malerman, Josh – Inspection (Del Rey)Miskowski, S.P. – The Worst is Yet to Come (Trepidatio Publishing)Murray, Lee – Into the Ashes (Severed Press)Wendig, Chuck – Wanderers (Del Rey)
Superior Achievement in a First Novel
Winner: Read, Sarah – The Bone Weaver’s Orchard (Trepidatio Publishing)
Also nominated:Amor, Gemma – Dear Laura (Independently Published)Guignard, Eric J. – Doorways to the Deadeye (JournalStone)Lane, Michelle Renee – Invisible Chains (Haverhill House Publishing)Starling, Caitlin – The Luminous Dead (Harper Voyager)
Superior Achievement in a Young Adult Novel
Winner: Nzondi – Oware Mosaic (Omnium Gatherum)
Also nominated:Bérubé, Amelinda – Here There Are Monsters (Sourcebooks Fire)Dávila Cardinal, Ann – Five Midnights (Tor Teen)Gardner, Liana – Speak No Evil (Vesuvian Books)Marshall, Kate Alice – Rules for Vanishing (Viking Books for Young Readers)Salomon, Peter Adam – Eight Minutes, Thirty-Two Seconds (PseudoPsalms Press)
Superior Achievement in a Graphic Novel
Winner: Doran, Colleen & Gaiman, Neil – Neil Gaiman’s Snow, Glass, Apples
(Dark Horse Books)
Also nominated:Bunn, Cullen – Bone Parish Vol. 2 (BOOM! Studios)Liu, Marjorie – Monstress Volume 4: The Chosen (Image Comics)Manzetti, Alessandro – Calcutta Horror (Independent Legions Publishing)Tanabe, Gou – H.P. Lovecraft’s At the Mountains of Madness Volume 1 (Dark Horse Manga)
Superior Achievement in Long Fiction
Winner: LaValle, Victor – Up from Slavery (Weird Tales Magazine#363) (Weird Tales Inc.)
Also nominated:Manzetti, Alessandro – The Keeper of Chernobyl (Omnium Gatherum)Taborska, Anna – The Cat Sitter (Shadowcats) (Black Shuck Books)Tantlinger, Sara – To Be Devoured (Unnerving)Warren, Kaaron – Into Bones Like Oil (Meerkat Shorts)
Superior Achievement in Short Fiction
Winner: Kiste, Gwendolyn – “The Eight People Who Murdered Me (Excerpt from Lucy Westenra’s Diary)” (Nightmare Magazine Nov. 2019, Issue 86)
Also nominated:Chapman, Greg – “The Book of Last Words” (This Sublime Darkness and Other Dark Stories) (Things in the Well Publishing)Landry, Jess – “Bury Me in Tar and Twine” (Tales of the Lost Volume 1: We All Lose Something!) (Things in the Well Publishing)O’Quinn, Cindy – “Lydia” (The Twisted Book of Shadows) (Twisted Publishing)Waggoner, Tim – “A Touch of Madness”(The Pulp Horror Book of Phobias) (LVP Publications)
Superior Achievement in a Fiction Collection
Winner: Tremblay, Paul – Growing Things and Other Stories (William Morrow)
Also nominated:Chiang, Ted – Exhalation: Stories (Knopf)Jonez, Kate – Lady Bits (Trepidatio Publishing)Langan, John – Sefira and Other Betrayals (Hippocampus Press)Read, Sarah – Out of Water (Trepidatio Publishing)
Superior Achievement in a Screenplay
Winner: Peele, Jordan – Us (Monkeypaw Productions, Perfect World Pictures, Dentsu, Fuji Television Network, Universal Pictures)
Also nominated:Aster, Ari – Midsommar (B-Reel Films, Square Peg)Duffer Brothers, The – Stranger Things (Season 3, Chapter Eight: The Battle of Starcourt) (Netflix)Eggers, Robert and Eggers, Max – The Lighthouse (A24, New Regency Pictures, RT Features)Flanagan, Mike – Doctor Sleep (Warner Bros., Intrepid Pictures/Vertigo Entertainment)
Superior Achievement in an Anthology
Winner: Datlow, Ellen – Echoes: The Saga Anthology of Ghost Stories (Gallery/Saga Press)
Also nominated:Brozek, Jennifer – A Secret Guide to Fighting Elder Gods (Pulse Publishing)Golden, Christopher and Moore, James A. – The Twisted Book of Shadows (Twisted Publishing)Guignard, Eric J. – Pop the Clutch: Thrilling Tales of Rockabilly, Monsters, and Hot Rod Horror (Dark Moon Books)Wilson, Robert S. – Nox Pareidolia (Nightscape Press)
Superior Achievement in Non-Fiction
Winner: Kröger, Lisa and Anderson, Melanie R. – Monster, She Wrote: The Women Who Pioneered Horror and Speculative Fiction (Quirk Books)
Also nominated:
Beal, Eleanor and Greenaway, Jonathan – Horror and Religion: New Literary Approaches to Theology, Race, and Sexuality (University of Wales Press)Earle, Harriet E.H. – Gender, Sexuality, and Queerness in American Horror Story: Critical Essays (McFarland)Heller-Nicholas, Alexandra – Masks in Horror Cinema: Eyes Without Faces (University of Wales Press)Kachuba, John B. – Shapeshifters: A History (Reaktion Books)
Superior Achievement in Short Non-Fiction
Winner: Kiste, Gwendolyn – “Magic, Madness, and Women Who Creep: The Power of Individuality in the Work of Charlotte Perkins Gilman”
(Vastarien: A Literary Journal Vol. 2, Issue 1)
Also nominated:Liaguno, Vince A. – “Slasher Films Made Me Gay: The Queer Appeal and Subtext of the Genre” (LGBTQ+ Horror Month: 9/1/2019, Ginger Nuts of Horror)Renner, Karen J.“The Evil Aging Women of American Horror Story” (Elder Horror: Essays on Film’s Frightening Images of Aging) (McFarland)Robinson, Kelly – “Film’s First Lycanthrope: 1913’s The Werewolf” (Scary Monsters Magazine #114)Weich, Valerie E. – “Lord Byron’s Whipping Boy: Dr. John William Polidori and the 200th Anniversary of The Vampyre” (Famous Monsters of Filmland, Issue #291)
Superior Achievement in a Poetry Collection
Winner: Addison, Linda D. and Manzetti, Alessandro – The Place of Broken Things
(Crystal Lake Publishing)
Also nominated:Cade, Octavia – Mary Shelley Makes a Monster (Aqueduct Press)Lynch, Donna – Choking Back the Devil (Raw Dog Screaming Press)Scalise, Michelle – Dragonfly and Other Songs of Mourning (LVP Publications)Simon, Marge and Dietrich, Bryan D. – The Demeter Diaries (Independent Legions Publishing)Wytovich, Stephanie M. – The Apocalyptic Mannequin (Raw Dog Screaming Press)

Friday, April 10, 2020

The Bram Stoker Awards Announced on YouTube 4/18

Click here to access the YouTube page

Next week was supposed to be StokerCon UK [it's been moved to August] and during that event, the Bram Stoker Awards were to be announced on Saturday April, 18th. Well, due to the hard work of the Horror Writers Association Stoker Awards Team and our President, John Palisano, the Awards are still happening online.

In fact, the awards are going to be an all day event now with readings by the nominees going up throughout the day. Right now there are also interviews with some of the nominees available to watch immediately.

This will be an excellent way for library workers to familiar themselves with the current state of the genre.

But, since I know very well that many of you are a bit far behind in your horror knowledge, I have even more to help you. I will be presenting my brand new program-- Horror Readers' Advisory: How to Help Your Scariest Patrons-- Thursday, April 16th at 1pm central. Anyone can view the live webinar, but the recording will only be available to Reaching Across Illinois Library System members [RAILS]. You can click here to sign up. I will have my live slides available for viewing on Thursday.

I scheduled this webinar on purpose to happen just before the Bram Stoker Awards to help you get yourselves ready.

Please mark your calendars for next week to get yourselves in genre shape-- horror style.

I mean, it is perfect timing as we are almost exactly halfway to Halloween!