JUST OVER A MONTH AGO, right after I landed in Santiago, Chile for a week-long business trip, I received word that my sixth novel, NightWhere, had made the final ballot for this year’s Bram Stoker Awards.
What a great way to start a long trip, right? I was obviously pretty excited about the nomination — this is the first time one of my novels has been on the Bram Stoker ballot since Covenant got there in 2004/2005. And Covenant made the ballot (and won) for achievement in a “First Novel”… it didn’t appear in the broader “Superior Achievement in a Novel” category.
I posted about the nomination back when it was announced on Facebook and Twitter, but I ended up traveling for work so much in March (and dealing with a couple of big deadlines), that I never actually got around to acknowledging the honor here on my own blog or website! So I thought I’d post about this today, even though it’s old news in a sense at this point!
The Bram Stoker Awards are given out by the Horror Writers Association (HWA) every year in a number of categories, and this year’s winners will be announced at an awards banquet (which I’ll be attending) in New Orleans in June, 2013. You can see the full ballot on the HWA site. The awards are voted on by all of the Active Members of the HWA, so this really is an award from one’s peers. At this point, all the voting has been completed, but I won’t find out the results for a couple more months. Either way, I’m just really excited and honored by the nomination!
My publisher issued a press release about the award nomination last month and a few days ago, a nice feature on the novel went up over at the KindleBoards.
My local newspaper also did a short article about the nomination, although clearly the copyeditor there didn’t read the article very closely and isn’t familiar with the creator of Dracula – the headline erroneously said that I had “won” the Brom Stroker award! Oh well, perhaps the article convinced a couple people to check the book out anyway.
I know some people read the article because it brought me a letter of congratulations in the mail a few days ago from my State Senator Michael Connelly (an unexpected perk!)
Having NightWhere recognized like this has extra meaning to me because this is the book that I was “afraid” to write for many years. But in 2011, after the dissolution of my previous publisher, I decided to dive in go for it.
NightWhere became my first release last year from the new horror imprint of Samhain Publishing headed up by Don D’Auria, the editor for my first five novels at Leisure Books. Now that Leisure’s 40-year run as a mass market publisher has ended, Samhain has picked up the horror flag, and I’m proud to be part of this new line. (They will be releasing my seventh novel, Violet Eyes, this fall).
NightWhere is an erotic horror novel that I first envisioned over 10 years ago, before I actually finished the final draft of my first novel, Covenant. The extreme and sexual nature of the content kept me from tackling it for a long time. At one point I even considered writing it under a pseudonym. But I’m glad I didn’t — the book has ended up garnering the best reviews of any of my works. Of course, the first leading question in virtually every interview I’ve done for it over the past six months has been “how did you do your research for this…nudge-nudge, wink-wink.” Nobody ever likes to hear the mundane answer — I have a very active imagination!
There are a number of additional publications related to the novel coming over the next few months. A new press in Poland — Radical Press — has licensed the book to issue a translation there, and Festa Verlag in Germany (who will be issuing a translation of Siren as Ligeia this spring) has also licensed the novel for German translation.
Closer to home, Bad Moon Books will be issuing a collectible hardcover edition in a few weeks. I just got the cover art today, and it looks awesome – click on the thumbnail on the right to see it full size!
Bad Moon will start taking pre-orders for the limited hardcover edition in a couple weeks, so if you’re like me, and love having hardcover editions on your bookshelves… stay tuned!
If you prefer audiobooks, Audio Realms will be issuing an audiobook edition of NightWhere sometime later this summer.
I’m also about done with a short novelette related to the NightWhere world, which will likely turn up on Amazon in the near future.
So there’s a lot going on with NightWhere to keep me busy over the next few weeks… while I’m crossing my fingers and wondering what news the envelope will hold in New Orleans on June 15th!
