This happened a week or two ago, but I’ve been so busy I haven’t been able to keep up with my blog posts. Anyway…My debut novel The Panama Laugh is on the preliminary ballot for the Bram Stoker Award from the Horror Writers Association! I’m not a “nominee” yet, and I’m definitely not a “finalist,” yet. But I’m very excited to be on the ballot.

Needless to say, I’m thrilled, and completely blown away — this was pretty unexpected. I’m greatly honored to be in such great company. It reminds me what a privilege it’s been to work with such incredible writers over the years. On the preliminary ballot are, among others, many people I’ve worked with. There’s my good friend Shade Rupe, to whose fantastic anthology Funeral Party II I contributed “Viva Las Vegas,” and with whom I collaborated on an (as yet unproduced) screenplay; there’s my fellow Night Bazaar blogger John Hornor Jacobs; there’s Maria Alexander, who wrote several wonderful articles for me when I was editing Eros Zine, the brilliant Brian Hodge, who contributed two completely incredible stories to my Noirotica series, Caitlin R. Kiernan, a contributor of wonderful pieces to several of my anthologies including Noirotica 2 and Brothers of the Night, Nancy Holder, who contributed a magnificent story to In the Shadow of the Gargoyle, one of the Ace Books anthologies I edited with Nancy Kilpatrick, plus such luminaries as Robert Dunbar, Jeff and Ann Vandermeer, Jonathan Maberry, Adam Troy Castro, Marti Noxon of Buffy fame, John Ajvide Lindqvist, author of Let The Right One In, and — GASP — Stephen King, Joyce Carol Oates, Alan Moore, Peter Straub, Ellen Datlow…the list goes on. I’m absolutely amazed to have my name mentioned in the same breath as people like this.

In case you don’t know about the Bram Stoker Awards, here’s what Wikipedia says about them:

The Bram Stoker Award is a recognition presented by the Horror Writers Association (HWA) for “superior achievement” in horror writing. The awards have been presented annually since 1987, and the winners are selected by ballot of the Active members of the HWA. They are named after influential Irish horror writer Bram Stoker, author of the novel Dracula, among others.

[Link.]

Have I mentioned, by the way, that Stoker’s Dracula is one of my favorite novels of all time?

Here’s the complete preliminary ballot, from HWA’s site. (Again — just to remind everyone — I’m not a “nominee” or a “finalist” yet. I just made the preliminary ballot…which doesn’t take away from the honor.)

NOVEL:

RECS:

Ballot Required
Lamberson, Greg — Cosmic Forces
Longfellow, Ki — Houdini Heart
Malfi, Ronald — Floating Staircase
O’Neill, Gene — Not Fade Away
Warner, Matthew — Blood Born
JURY:

Ballot Required
Conlon, Christopher — A Matrix Of Angels
Dunbar, Robert — Willy
McKinney, Joe — Flesh Eaters
Oliver, Reggie — The Dracula Papers, Book 1: The Scholar’s Tale
Thomas, Lee — The German

FIRST NOVEL:

RECS:

Ballot Required
Bird, Allyson — Isis Unbound
Lee, Frazer — The Lamplighters
Reynolds, Graeme — High Moor
Talley, Brett J. — That Which Should Not Be
Wagner, Jeremy — The Armageddon Chord
JURY:

No ballot required, the following works will proceed directly to the Final Ballot. Please note these works may not be described as Nominees until the Final Ballot is formally announced.
Jacobs, John, Horner — Southern Gods
Roche, Thomas — The Panama Laugh

YA NOVEL:

RECS:

Ballot Required
Faherty, J. G. — Ghosts of Coronado Bay, A Maya Blair Mystery
Holder, Nancy — The Screaming Season
Maberry, Jonathan — Dust & Decay
Matthews, Araminta Star — Blind Hunger
JURY:

Ballot Required
Blake, Kendare — Anna Dressed in Blood
Kraus, Daniel — Rotters
Ness, Patrick — A Monster Calls
Oppel, Kenneth — This Dark Endeavor: The Apprenticeship of Victor Frankenstein
Roth, Veronica — Divergent

GRAPHIC NOVEL:

RECS:

Ballot Required
Hill, Joe — Locke & Key, Volume 4
Maberry, Jonathan — Marvel Universe vs. The Punisher
Maberry, Jonathan — Marvel Universe vs. Wolverine
Mignola, Mike and Golden, Christopher — The Plague Ships
O’Reilly, Sean; Nassise, Joe; Weick, Halston — Candice Crow
JURY:

Ballot Required
Brosgol, Vera — Anya’s Ghost
Fialkov, Joshua Hale — Echoes
Jensen, Jeff — Green River Killer
Moore, Alan — Neonomicon
Smith, John — Cradlegrave

LONG FICTION:

RECS:

Ballot Required
Breaux, Kevin James — Dark Water: Beaming Smile
Calvillo, Michael Louis — 7Brains
Little, John R. — Ursa Major
O’Neill, Gene — Rusting Chickens
Schwamberger, Ty — The Fields
JURY:

Ballot Required
Hodge, Brian — Roots and All
Kiernan, Caitlin — The Colliers’ Venus (1893)
Lindqvist, John Ajvide — The Music of Bengt Karlsson, Murderer
Shearman, Robert — Alice Through A Plastic Sheet
Straub, Peter — The Ballad of Ballard and Sandrine

SHORT FICTION:

RECS:

Ballot Required
Bailey, Michael — “It Tears Away” (The Shadow of the Unknown)
Lillie-Paetz, Ken — “Hypergraphia” (The Uninvited, Issue 1)
O’Neill, Gene — “Graffiti Sonata” (Dark Discoveries)
Palisano, John — “X is for Xyx” (M is for Monster)
Warren, Kaaron — “All You Can Do Is Breathe” (Blood and Other Cravings)
JURY:

Ballot Required
Ausubel, Ramona — “Atria” (The New Yorker Magazine, April 4, 2011)
Ballingrud, Nathan — “Sunbleached” (Teeth: Vampire Tales)
Castro, Adam Troy — “Her Husband’s Hands” (Lightspeed Magazine)
King, Stephen — “Herman Wouk Is Still Alive” (The Atlantic Magazine, May 2011)
Saunders, George — “Home” (The New Yorker Magazine, June 13, 2011)

SCREENPLAY:

RECS:

No ballot required, the following works will proceed directly to the Final Ballot. Please note these works may not be described as Nominees until the Final Ballot is formally announced.
Ball, Alan — True Blood: Spellbound (Episode #44)
Goodman, Cory — Priest
Nolfi, George — The Adjustment Bureau
JURY:

Ballot Required
Gimple, Scott M. — The Walking Dead, episode 13: “Pretty Much Dead Already”
Gimple, Scott M. — The Walking Dead, episode 9: “Save the Last One”
Noxon, Marti — Fright Night
Ovrehahl, Andre and Havard S. Johansen — Troll Hunter
Sharzer, Jessica — American Horror Story, episode 12: “Afterbirth”

ANTHOLOGY:

RECS:

No ballot required, the following works will proceed directly to the Final Ballot. Please note these works may not be described as Nominees until the Final Ballot is formally announced.
Carbone, Tracy L. — NEHW Presents: Epitaphs
Hutton, Frank J. — Tattered Souls 2
Skipp, John — Demons: Encounters with the Devil and His Minions, Fallen Angels, and the Possessed
JURY:

Ballot Required
Dann, Jack and Nick Gevers — Ghosts By Gaslight
Datlow, Ellen — Blood And Other Cravings
Datlow, Ellen — Supernatural Noir
Datlow, Ellen and Terri Windling — Teeth
VanderMeer, Jeff and Ann — The Thackery T. Lambshead Cabinet of Curiosities

COLLECTION:

RECS:

Ballot Required
Burke, Chesya — Let’s Play White
Connolly, Lawrence C. — Voices: Tales of Horror
Gresh, Lois — Eldritch Evolutions
Haines, Paul — The Last Days of Kali Yuga
Morton, Lisa — Monsters of L.A.
Ochse, Weston — Multiplex Fandango
JURY:

Ballot Required
Fowler, Christopher — Red Gloves: The London Horrors
Kiernan, Caitlin R. — Two Worlds and In-Between
Llewellyn, Livia — Engines of Desire
Oates, Joyce Carol — The Corn Maiden and Other Nightmares
Oliver, Reggie — Mrs. Midnight and Other Stories

NON-FICTION:

RECS:

No ballot required, the following works will proceed directly to the Final Ballot. Please note these works may not be described as Nominees until the Final Ballot is formally announced.
Bannatyne, Lesley Pratt — Halloween Nation: Behind the Scenes of America’s Fright Night
Mamatas, Nick — Starve Better
Mogk, Matt — Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Zombies
JURY:

Ballot Required
Crawford, Gary William, Jim Rockhill, and Brian J. Showers, Eds. — Reflections in a Glass Darkly
Rupe, Shade — Dark Stars Rising
Shultz, David E. and S.T. Joshi, Ed. — Letters to James F. Morton
Tibbetts, John C. — The Gothic Imagination
Wood, Rocky — Stephen King: A Literary Companion

POETRY:

RECS:

Ballot Required
Alexander, Maria — At Louche Ends: Poetry for the Decadent,the Damned & the Absinthe-Minded
Clark, G.O — Shroud of Night
Borski, Robert — Blood Wallah and Other Poems
Simon, Marge — The Mad Hattery
Ward, Kyla Lee — The Land of Bad Dreams
JURY:

Ballot Required
Addison, Linda — How to Recognize a Demon Has Become Your Friend
Boston, Bruce — Surrealities
Marshall, Helen — Skeleton Leaves
Schwader, Ann K. — Twisted in Dream
Simon, Marge — Unearthly Delights

From my new column at The Night Bazaar, about finding your strengths and weaknesses as a writer:

I’m far from convinced there’s any such profession as “writer” anymore; we’re all multi-taskers, by definition.

But there is this thing called “writing,” yes, and occasionally I get to do it.

When it comes to writing itself, I like to believe that my strengths are far more numerous than my weaknesses.

But it’s quite possible that I’m kidding myself.

What I do find is that the more I write, the less my strengths matter and the more my weaknesses do. That’s because writing a lot of fiction puts me face-to-face with every possible roadblock in my creative process, and every roadblock is a potential “debunking” of my strengths. It doesn’t matter how great I can write X type of scene, if Y type of scene keeps me from ever finishing my novel.

As a result, all that my strengths do is allow me to get past the weaknesses, or manage them effectively. That’s great news, yeah, but if I take the time to celebrate my strengths, it only slows me down.

Here’s an example.

Read the rest of this post at The Night Bazaar.

Here’s an excerpt from my new post at The Night Bazaar, “Heroes and Heroines:”

I’m never quite sure what makes a hero, which I think is probably the key to knowing what makes a hero.

I look at it this way: if being a hero was easy, everyone would do it. But it’s not just that being a hero takes work or sacrifice…on the contrary, it takes knowing what to do to remedy a grievous situation, or at least prevent it from getting any worse. That’s actually a really tall order for most of us.

A hero is somebody who’s willing to get the knowledge necessary to understand what can be done without screwing up the world even worse than it’s screwed up. That doesn’t mean all protagonists are heroes — far from it. Many, even most, might have some heroic qualities…especially in adventure fiction. But that doesn’t make them heroes.

Read the rest of the post at The Night Bazaar.

Given the stunning, overwhelming, “Tell-Scorsese-he-can-wait” success of my first novel, noir-themed zombie apocalypse The Panama Laugh (of which there are extremely few copies left — extremely few! — so you’d better buy it right now or they might run out), people keep asking me, they say, “Rosanne Rosanna-Danna, what other a-zombie stories have you a-written?” I tell them, well, it’s like this.

My Affairs With the DeadZombie Stories by Thomas S. Roche

“Viva Las Vegas.” A tale about dirty rotten gamblers and the heavily-armed hit man who kills them a second time…sometimes a third. Only incidentally funny. When the zombocalypse hits, a Mob hit man who made the mistake of working “one last job” and got his fiancee killed must cruise the broken streets of Vegas looking for her. (Appeared in Funeral Party 2, edited by Shade Rupe.) Buy a copy of “Viva Las Vegas” for 99 cents in the Amazon Kindle Store.

“The Sound of Weeping.” A short story of terrifying necroschtuppery. Not funny. No LOLZ, really. Charlie Quinn, a morgue attendant in a small Northern California hippie town fights with his gay coworker for teasing him — but inside he’s fighting his own erotic impulses until they break him…and break the laws of living and dying… (Appeared in Queer Fear, edited by Michael Rowe.) Buy a copy of “The Sound of Weeping” for 99 cents in the Amazon Kindle Store.

“Veggie Mountain.” A story of homophobia, with no LOLZ at all. The sequel to “The Sound of Weeping.” On the non-responsive ward in Monteverdi Hospital, also known as “Veggie Mountain,” the now-catat0nic Charles Quinn has been incarcerated after being found incompetent to stand trial for a string of brutal sex-murders. A homophobic attendant who’s been accused of abusing the inmates finds that Charles remains catatonic for a damned good reason, and when he’s threatened, a few “old friends” may show up to visit… (Appeared in Queer Fear 2, edited by Michael Rowe.) Buy a copy of Veggie Mountain for $2.99 in the Amazon Kindle Store.

“Deepwater Miracle.” A novella of the chuckleheaded apocalypse. Only incidentally funny. Set in the world of The Panama Laugh, the novella-length “Deepwater Miracle” follows two seafaring brothers as they try to make landfall in Texas after crossing the oil-choked Gulf following the Laughing Apocalypse. (Appeared in Z: Zombie Stories, edited by J.M. Lassen.)

“St. John of the Throwdown.” A tale of beach-bound frat assholes. Not funny…plenty LOLZ. Set in the world of The Panama Laugh, “St. John of the Throwdown” tells the story of a homeless teen on the run, and her experiences on the beach in San Francisco the morning the world ends with a giggle. Appeared on the podcast Open Source Sex, read by Violet Blue (for whom the story was written). Buy a copy in the Amazon Kindle Store.

“October in Tuscvari.” A gonzo tale of alien mind control. Sadly, I anticipate pushback from any playa hatas who believe that all zombiism comes from the copious manhood of George Romero. There was a whole not-very-good genre of zombie flick well before Georgie was in short pants. Before zombies ever became the walking dead, they were the victims of mad scientist mind-control rays, so I feel I must include “Tuscvari” in the zombie list, even though there’s not a living dead person to be seen. It’s about bigfoot, aliens, and a lawyer with a really hot biracial wife. No, it’s not dirty, except when the two hippies feed each other free-trade organic chocolate. It’s about politics. Published on Thomasroche.com on Inauguration Day, 2008. Buy a copy of “October in Tuscvari” for $2.99  in the Amazon Kindle Store.
 

 

Image from Arthur's Bookshelf.

I was asked to participate in a recent Mind Meld over at the science fiction blog SF Signal. The question was “What book did you last read that you would recommend to a friend.” I love the answers — it’s always great hearing what other readers are enjoying. In keeping with my recent Steampunk reading (though I don’t know if source materials can be steampunk, at least the first time around…), here’s part of mine:

Currently I’m formulating some ideas about a character who writes Victorian science fiction, so the last book I read is one I’ve read before and totally love: The Huge Hunter, or The Steam Man of the Prairies by Edward Sylvester Ellis. It is one of the first examples of the boy inventor genre, a genre that John Clute (well after the fact) called the “Edisonade,” although the main character of The Huge Hunter is actually not a boy — he’s a little person…

Read the rest at SF Signal.
 

 

This week we’re talking about narrative point of view, a topic close to my rotten, diseased heart. My nearest and dearest will tell you that there is nothing I love more than annoying the living bejeezus out of readers by using an atypical POV.

Mind you, this only really works (for me) in short fiction. With novels, I always gravitate toward first-person. But more on that later. First, let me brag about my bad-ass POV-fu, and how annoying it is. I swear, sometimes I think I’m going to get myself knifed! Like the time I opened a story with a long passage in second-person future subjunctive. (“If you were to go downtown on a Saturday, maybe you’d be looking for this particular corner…then if you were to knock on the door and say, ‘I’m here to annoy readers’…”)

You woulda thought I’d just been caught in public badmouthing Joss Whedon!

Of course, far more common is my fondness for second-person. I love this shit, because it calls into question who exactly the viewpoint character is. My love of second-person narration is well known among my small circle of beta readers. (I even co-wrote two romantic books all in second-person.) Lots of people hate that.

Then, of course, there’s the fact that I love present tense. That’s not POV, but it certainly relates directly to it; tense and POV are the two most central (and easily variable) things about any piece of fiction writing.

Read the rest at The Night Bazaar.

Hey! If you’re in the San Francisco area, come see me read with Richard Kadrey and Naamen Tilahun at Borderlands Books on Valencia Street tomorrow evening (Saturday 10/15/2011). It’s part of Litquake’s Litcrawl, the annual orgiastic celebration of the spoken word. You can find more details at my blog, or go to Borderlands-Books.com or Litquake.com. Hope to see you there!

Writing Rules vs. Rules of Thumb

This week we’re talking about writing advice I hate. I hate a lot of it, if not most of it. I think writing advice is fine…in its place. But my view is that writing advice should be considered a “rule of thumb,” not a rule. When writing advice starts to look like “rules,” it too often shows the cognitive, social and creative shortcomings and prejudices of the person who came up with it.

Mind you, please don’t think I’m talking about the rules of grammar, composition, POV, etc, which I think if possible you should know like the back of your hand, and respect; however, you should also break them willy-nilly if that serves the Work. (See what I did there, with the capital “W”? That’s an example of messing with The Rules to make a point. There! I did it again!! Wasn’t that awesome? Doing it just because you’re pretentious is also allowed, but it will annoy the hell out of everyone around you, as I surely just did. But that’s their problem, right?)

Beyond those very limited rules of grammar and composition, I think advice that makes the jump from rules-of-thumb to rules-to-live-by is anathema to creativity. Every work of fiction is different, and it should all exist on its own terms.

Read the Rest of this post at Night-Bazaar.com.