Bram Stoker Award® Winners

The Bram Stoker Award® winners were announced yesterday. In case you missed the announcement, here's the list:

Superior Achievement in a NOVEL   
Paul Tremblay - A Head Full of Ghosts (William Morrow)

Superior Achievement in a FIRST NOVEL  
Nicole Cushing - Mr. Suicide (Word Horde)

Superior Achievement in a YOUNG ADULT NOVEL   
John Dixon – Devil's Pocket (Simon & Schuster)

Superior Achievement in a GRAPHIC NOVELS  
Sam Weller, Mort Castle, Chris Ryall, & Carlos Guzman (editors) Shadow Show: Stories in Celebration of Ray Bradbury (IDW Publishing)

Superior Achievement in LONG FICTION  
Mercedes M. Yardley - Little Dead Red (Grimm Mistresses) (Ragnarok Publications)

Superior Achievement in SHORT FICTION   
John Palisano - "Happy Joe's Rest Stop" (18 Wheels of Horror) (Big Time Books)

Superior Achievement in a SCREENPLAY   
David Robert Mitchell - It Follows (Northern Lights Films)

Superior Achievement in an ANTHOLOGY  
Michael Bailey - The Library of the Dead (Written Backwards)

Superior Achievement in a FICTION COLLECTION 
 Lucy A. Snyder - While the Black Stars Burn (Raw Dog Screaming Press)

Superior Achievement in NON-FICTION 
 Stephen Jones - The Art of Horror (Applause Theatre & Cinema Books)

Superior Achievement in a POETRY COLLECTION  
Alessandro Manzetti - Eden Underground (Crystal Lake Publishing)

Congratulations to all of the award winners.

The Witch

Our fascination with witchcraft continues unabated. Is it the special ability of persons to control their environment and events that intrigues us? Or maybe there's a much simpler explanation: witches are downright scary, and who doesn't like the catharsis of a good scare from time to time?

The Witch has an 83% rating on Metacritics and will be available in DVD and Blu-ray format on May 16.

Here's a synopsis:

In this exquisitely-made and terrifying new horror film, the age-old concepts of witchcraft, black magic and possession are innovatively brought together to tell the intimate and riveting story of one family's frightful unraveling.

Set in New England circa 1630, The Witch follows a farmer who get cast out of his colonial plantation and is forced to move his family to a remote plot of land on the edge of an ominous forest rumored to be controlled by witches. Almost immediately, strange and unsettling things begin to happen-the animals turn violent, the crops fail, and one of the children disappears, only to return seemingly possessed by an evil spirit.  As suspicion and paranoia mount, everyone begins to point the finger at teenage daughter Thomasin. They accuse her of witchcraft, which she adamantly denies...but as circumstances become more and more treacherous, each family member's faith, loyalty, and love will be tested in shocking and unforgettable ways.


To watch a trailer, please click here.

Upcoming StokerCon™ 2016

Just a reminder that StokerCon™ 2016 will soon be upon us. It takes place at the Flamingo Hotel in Las Vegas from May 12-15, 2016.

Guests of honor include Jack Ketchum, R.L. Stine, and many other distinguished horror writers.

The winners of the Bram Stoker Awards® will be announced at a special banquet during the convention.

A feature of the convention is Horror University, a series of presentations and workshops "run by some of the best and brightest in the horror field".

For more information, please click here.

And stay tuned for a subsequent blog post on the Bram Stoker Award® winners.

The Fireman: An Upcoming May Release

Fans of Joe Hill will be pleased to know that his latest novel, The Fireman, is due for release on May 17, 2016.

Here's an excerpt from the book description:

No one knows exactly when it began or where it originated. A terrifying new plague is spreading like wildfire across the country, striking cities one by one: Boston, Detroit, Seattle. The doctors call it Draco Incendia Trychophyton. To everyone else it’s Dragonscale, a highly contagious, deadly spore that marks its hosts with beautiful black and gold marks across their bodies—before causing them to burst into flames. Millions are infected; blazes erupt everywhere. There is no antidote. No one is safe.

Harper Grayson, a compassionate, dedicated nurse as pragmatic as Mary Poppins, treated hundreds of infected patients before her hospital burned to the ground. Now she’s discovered the telltale gold-flecked marks on her skin. . . .

 . . . The chaos gives rise to ruthless Cremation Squads—armed, self-appointed posses roaming the streets and woods to exterminate those who they believe carry the spore. But Harper isn’t as alone as she fears: a mysterious and compelling stranger she briefly met at the hospital, a man in a dirty yellow fire fighter’s jacket, carrying a hooked iron bar, straddles the abyss between insanity and death. Known as The Fireman, he strolls the ruins of New Hampshire, a madman afflicted with Dragonscale who has learned to control the fire within himself, using it as a shield to protect the hunted . . . and as a weapon to avenge the wronged.

In the desperate season to come, as the world burns out of control, Harper must learn the Fireman's secrets before her life—and that of her unborn child—goes up in smoke. 

 To view some preliminary reviews of The Fireman and to enter a Goodreads giveaway for the book,  please click here.

The Stanley Hotel: Is It Really Haunted?

Photo courtesy of Stanley Hotel Website

Fans of Stephen King's The Shining will probably know the story behind the Stanley Hotel, which is said to have been the inspiration for the novel. (In the novel, the hotel was known as The Overlook.)

Located in Estes Park, Colorado, the Stanley Hotel has a history of being haunted. Recently a guest staying there claims to have photographed a ghost on its grand stairway.

You can check out his photograph to see if you agree with him.

To visit the website of the Stanley Hotel, please click here.

It's accepting reservations and you can even order your own REDRUM coffee mug...

LibraryThing's Early Reviewers Giveaway for The Accusers

If you're a member of LibraryThing's Early Reviewers Program--or would like to sign up for free to become a member--you'll see that 25 copies of The Accusers in e-book format are available as giveaways in the April batch of recently published books.

This program allows publishers and authors to connect with readers in all genres. Like the GoodReads giveaway program, it encourages readers to publish reviews for the books they receive.

For more information, please click here.

Goodreads Book Giveaway for The Accusers

The Goodreads giveaway is up and running for my new book, The Accusers, and it is now available on Kobo as well as Kindle (and in paperback through Amazon).

Here's a brief excerpt from the book:

. . . Rebecca Anderson, affectionately known as Becca by family and friends, was a pleasant-faced woman, short and a bit plump, with curly grey hair. She was usually quick to smile, but today her expression was one of sadness. She turned on a reading lamp as she sat in her living room. It was February: the shortest, yet longest month of the year. The last rays of the winter sun had already died, and it was only 5 pm. According to the local news channel, there was heavy snow in the forecast.

Becca didn’t understand the depression she’d been experiencing lately. She’d lived in this house on Berwick Street for forty years and had raised three children here with the help of her beloved husband Jack, dead of cancer for five years now. She’d always tried to see the best in people and circumstances. . . .

She headed for the kitchen to begin preparing her supper. Her constant shadow, Mooch the cat, was nowhere to be seen.

He must be sleeping somewhere.
 
Becca pulled the cutting board from the cupboard and started assembling ingredients for a salad. She searched for the knife she always used to cut vegetables, but it wasn’t in the butcher’s block or the dishwasher.

Strange. I’m only sixty-five. I hope I’m not starting to get forgetful and misplacing things.

She selected another knife and began to slice the lettuce and tomatoes, trying to pinpoint when exactly this depressed feeling had started. . . .

Her thoughts were interrupted by a loud thump outside on the porch. Becca wiped her hands on a dish towel and hurried to the door. When she opened it, she found a note pinned there with her missing knife.Her hands shaking, she removed the knife and read the note.

You have been marked.

She spotted Mooch under the living room couch. The cat was hissing violently in fright, but there was no one to be seen on the street nor were there footprints in the crusted snow. . . .