2007 Bram Stoker Award Nominees

The Horror Writers Association has announced the nominees for the 2007 Bram Stoker Awards:

Superior Achievement in a NOVEL

• THE GUARDENER'S TALE by Bruce Boston (Sam's Dot)
• HEART-SHAPED BOX by Joe Hill (William Morrow)
• THE MISSING by Sarah Langan (Harper)
• THE WITCH'S TRINITY by Erika Mailman (Crown)
• THE TERROR by Dan Simmons (Little, Brown)

Superior Achievement in a FIRST NOVEL

• I WILL RISE by Michael Louis Calvillo (Lachesis Publishing)
• HEART-SHAPED BOX by Joe Hill (William Morrow)
• THE MEMORY TREE by John R. Little (Nocturne Press)
• THE HOLLOWER by Mary SanGiovanni (Leisure Books)

Superior Achievement in LONG FICTION

• AFTERWARD, THERE WILL BE A HALLWAY by Gary Braunbeck (Five Strokes to Midnight)
• ALMOST THE LAST STORY BY ALMOST THE LAST MAN by Scott Edelman (Postscripts)
• GENERAL SLOCUM'S GOLD by Nicholas Kaufmann (Burning Effigy Press)
• THE TENTH MUSE by William Browning Spencer (Subterranean #6)
• AN APIARY OF WHITE BEES by Lee Thomas (Inferno)

Superior Achievement in SHORT FICTION

• THE DEATH WAGON ROLLS ON BY by C. Dean Andersson (Cemetery Dance #57)
• LETTING GO by John Everson (Needles and Sins)
• THE TEACHER by Paul G. Tremblay (Chizine)
• THERE'S NO LIGHT BETWEEN FLOORS by Paul G. Tremblay (Clarkesworld)
• CLOSET DREAMS by Lisa Tuttle (Postscripts #10)
• THE GENTLE BRUSH OF WINGS by David Niall Wilson (Defining Moments)

Superior Achievement in an ANTHOLOGY

• FIVE STROKES TO MIDNIGHT edited by Gary Braunbeck and Hank Schwaeble (Haunted Pelican Press)
• INFERNO edited by Ellen Datlow (Tor)
• DARK DELICACIES 2: FEAR edited by Del Howison & Jeff Gelb (Carroll & Graf/Avalon)
• MIDNIGHT PREMIERE edited by Tom Piccirilli (Cemetery Dance Publications)
• AT EASE WITH THE DEAD edited by Barbara & Christopher Roden (Ash-Tree Press)

Superior Achievement in a COLLECTION

• PROVERBS FOR MONSTERS by Michael A. Arnzen (Dark Regions Press)
• THE IMAGO SEQUENCE by Laird Barron (Night Shade Books)
• OLD DEVIL MOON by Christopher Fowler (Serpent's Tail)
• 5 STORIES by Peter Straub (Borderlands)
• DEFINING MOMENTS by David Niall Wilson (Sarob Press)

Superior Achievement in NONFICTION

• ENCYCLOPEDIA HORRIFICA by Joshue Gee (Scholastic)
  
• THE PORTABLE OBITUARY: HOW THE FAMOUS, RICH & POWERFUL REALLY DIED by Michael Largo (Harper)
  
• THE CRYPTOPEDIA: A DICTIONARY OF THE WEIRD, STRANGE & DOWNRIGHT BIZARRE by Jonathan Maberry & David F. Kramer (Citadel Press / Kensington)
  
• STORYTELLERS UNPLUGGED by Joe Nassise and David Niall Wilson (Storytellers Unplugged/)

Superior Achievement in POETRY

• BEING FULL OF LIGHT, INSUBSTANTIAL by Linda Addison (Space and Time)
  
• HERESY by Charlee Jacob (Bedlam Press [Necro Publications])
  
• VECTORS: A WEEK IN THE DEATH OF A PLANET by Charlee Jacob & Marge Simon (Dark Regions Press)
  
• PHANTASMAPEDIA by Mark McLaughlin (Dead Letter Press)
• OSSUARY by JoSelle Vanderhooft (Sam?s Dot Publishing)

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Jenny Crusie, Reformed Quote-Giver

After posting my previous blog entry today, in which I linked to three recent entries on Jenny Crusie's Aargh Ink blog, I came across something else on her blog that's too good to leave out.

This entry, however, is not humorous--or only marginally so, since Crusie is naturally comic and possibly incapable of writing anything completely humorless. Rather, this is a serious entry on a topic of great interest to authors: getting quotes from other published authors for one's books. Or, from the other end, being asked to give a quote praising another author's soon-to-be-published book. Crusie discusses the effects, and the ethics, of the practice in Confessions of a Reformed Quote Wh*re. Worth reading, and worth sober thought.

P.S. (January 20, 2010) Nearly TWO years after posting this entry originally, I've had to go in and change a few words because of blog-spammers, whose spambots apparently are set to track certain words (e.g., "wh*re," but with an "o" instead of an asterisk) and to post spam about certain medications, etc. For nearly a year this entry had five comments, all made shortly after the original post. In recent months, 44 more "comments" were added, all of them ridiculous, but I don't know how to remove them. And I hate to make it hard for my readers to comment by turning on Comment Moderation. What aggravation. Guess I oughta complain to Blogger's powers-that-be, but I'm too lazy.

Bits 'n' Pieces

Okay, I think everything she does is funny:

Jennifer Crusie blogs on how she screwed up a booksigning. (Even those big-money NYT bestseller-list authors f*ck things up. This is why she calls her blog Aargh Ink.)

In a subsequent post she talks about how she and her houseguests, who are collaborating on a book with her, write in separate rooms in the house and e-mail each other to communicate. (Well, hey, when you're in the creative-flow mode you don't want to be interrupted by a corporeal being appearing at your door, do you?)

And she discusses earworms--you know, those tunes that get stuck in your mind, replaying endlessly until you go insane? Because of Jenny's post, my brain now is alternating between "It's a Small World" (anyone who's ever been to Disneyland or Disney World knows what I mean) and "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" (a song I actually love, but not played over and over and over). The comments following the entry are great, and it's interesting to see the oddball songs that have become earworms for people.

sQuba: Isaac Asimov and James Bond combined

This is so cool...Like something out of an SF book or a James Bond movie. A car that drives underwater! In fact, turns out the inventor was inspired by a car from the 1977 Bond movie The Spy Who Loved Me.

http://www.usatoday.com/money/autos/2008-02-15-squba-car_N.htm?csp=tech

RSS Feed

One of the coolest things I've discovered since I started blogging is the RSS feed.

Before I got into the world of blogs, my Yahoo home page had modules to keep me up-to-date on local, state, national and international news; the publishing industry; magazines I like; advice columns that entertain me; my favorite cartoon strips; practical advice; humor; health information; and local movie showtimes. I chose these modules from lists provided by Yahoo when I was designing my home page. I didn't understand how they worked--changing on a daily or even hourly basis to reflect the latest news of their various topics--but I liked having them.

After I started reading blogs a couple of years ago, I began finding more and more blogs I enjoyed, but it was a lot of trouble getting to them regularly. Whenever I found a blog I liked, I'd add it to my Favorites list. To get back to it, I'd have to click on Favorites, then find the particular blog I was looking for, and click on it--a lot of repetitive effort. Most days it was too much effort, or too time-consuming, and I'd end up having to ignore blogs I would have liked to keep up with more regularly.

Then one day I noticed the "RSS FEED" button on someone's blog and thought, "What is that?" I clicked on it, read the Help information explaining its use, and then added the RSS feed for that blog to my home page.

Voila! Suddenly I no longer had to make a special effort to find that particular blog. Instead, the blog's title and its most recent entry were right there on my home page, and all I had to do was click on them to read the blog. Plus, I could see when there were new entries, so I wouldn't waste time going to the blog only to be disappointed when there was nothing new.

After using the RSS feed for the first time, I went crazy with it. I started adding RSS-fed blogs to my home page right and left. I place them at the top of the page, because the blogs are what I most enjoy reading so I want to read them first.

I now have 28 blog feeds on my home page. It's great, but sometimes reading the blogs takes up all my computer time, and I never even get to the 40 news, information, and humor modules below.

Oh well. This is why net-surfing uses up so much time.

But the RSS Feed is really cool. Instant info on tap.