The Horror Writers Association (HWA) announced their final ballot for this year’s Bram Stoker Awards for Superior Achievement. From this ballot, the members of HWA will choose the nominees to appear on the final ballot, and then they’ll vote on that ballot to determine the winners, which will be announced at at the 2009 Stoker Weekend, 12-14 June 2009, at the Burbank Marriott Hotel, near Los Angeles, California. (We listed the preliminary ballot, from which this final ballot was chosen, in this article.)
They’ve also announced that they’ll be giving two Lifetime Achievement Awards at this year’s awards banquet: to F. Paul Wilson and Chelsea Quinn Yarbro.
F. Paul Wilson is best known for his Repairman Jack series of novels, though those are only a part of his more than 40-book canon. In 1979 he won the first Prometheus Award and claimed a Porgie Award in 1984. He won a Bram Stoker Award in 1999 and has been recognized by the American Library Association and the New York Public Library.
Chelsea Quinn Yarbro rose to fame with her vampire hero, Count Saint-Germain. She is the first woman ever to receive the International Horror Guild’s Living Legend award. She also was the first woman elected president of the Horror Writers Association. Quinn’s novels are notable for laying the groundwork for the recent upsurge of “paranormal romance” and trans-genre fiction.
The rest of the final ballot is:
Superior Achievement in a Novel:
Coffin County by Gary Braunbeck (published by Leisure Books)
The Reach by Nate Kenyon (Leisure Books)
Duma Key by Stephen King (Scribner)
Johnny Gruesome by Gregory Lamberson (Bad Moon Books/Medallion Press)
Superior Achievement in a First Novel:
Midnight on Mourn Street by Christopher Conlon (Earthling Publications)
The Gentling Box by Lisa Mannetti (Dark Hart Press)
Monster Behind the Wheel by Michael McCarty and Mark McLaughlin (Delirium Books)
The Suicide Collectors by David Oppegaard (St. Martin’s Press)
Frozen Blood by Joel A. Sutherland (Lachesis Publishing)
Superior Achievement in Long Fiction:
The Shallow End of the Pool by Adam-Troy Castro (Creeping Hemlock Press)
Miranda by John R. Little (Bad Moon Books)
Redemption Roadshow by Weston Ochse (Burning Effigy Press)
The Confessions of St. Zach by Gene O’Neill (Bad Moon Books)
Superior Achievement in Short Fiction:
“Petrified” by Scott Edelman (Desolate Souls)
“The Lost” by Sarah Langan (Cemetery Dance Publications)
“The Dude Who Collected Lovecraft” by Nick Mamatas and Tim Pratt (Chizine)
“Evidence of Love in a Case of Abandonment” by M. Rickert (The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction)
“Turtle” by Lee Thomas (Doorways)
Superior Achievement in an Anthology:
Like a Chinese Tattoo edited by Bill Breedlove (Dark Arts Books)
Horror Library, Volume 3 edited by R.J. Cavender (Cutting Block Press)
Beneath the Surface edited by Tim Deal (Shroud Publishing)
Unspeakable Horror edited by Vince A. Liaguno and Chad Helder (Dark Scribe Press)
Superior Achievement in a Collection:
The Number 121 to Pennsylvania by Kealan Patrick Burke (Cemetery Dance Publications)
Mama’s Boy and Other Dark Tales by Fran Friel (Apex Publications)
Just After Sunset by Stephen King (Scribner)
Mr. Gaunt and Other Uneasy Encounters by John Langan (Prime Books)
Gleefully Macabre Tales by Jeff Strand (Delirium Books)
Superior Achievement in Nonfiction:
Cheap Scares by Gregory Lamberson (McFarland)
Zombie CSU by Jonathan Maberry (Citadel Press)
A Hallowe’en Anthology by Lisa Morton (McFarland)
The Book of Lists: Horror by Amy Wallace, Del Howison, and Scott Bradley (HarperCollins)
Superior Achievement in a Poetry Collection:
The Nightmare Collection by Bruce Boston (Dark Regions Press)
The Phantom World by Gary William Crawford (Sam’s Dot Publishing)
Virgin of the Apocalypse by Corrine De Winter (Sam’s Dot Publishing)
Attack of the Two-Headed Poetry Monster by Mark McLaughlin and Michael McCarty (Skullvines Press)