And the Victims Are…
And the Victims Are…
The Horror Writer's Association Honors Their Own.
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Special Stoker Weekend Report by Staci Layne Wilson
Photos: Enzo Giobbé
I'm in a roomful of murderers. Plotters. Assassins. That unassuming man murdered a slew of innocent victims, leaving pools of gore in his wake. The guy he's talking to, the middle-aged father of three slipping a soft drink and dressed so casually, has killed only a few people. But no less brutally. He even seems to relish recounting these grisly deaths, the pleas for mercy — then going so far as to describe the discovery of the bodies, their further desecration under a coroner's blades, and their final, forever goodbyes sealed in coffins and buried in cold, acrid-smelling dirt. Deep-sixed without a care. That woman over there, the petite one with the feral smile; she likes sex with vampires.
It takes all kinds to write dark fiction. Some of the attendees at the this year's Horror Writers Association Weekend and (2008) Bram Stoker Awards parties and banquet are true legends of the genre, while others are merely pleased to hold down day jobs while they express themselves writing artistic novels for small presses, or creepy poetry for magazines you have probably never heard of. But no matter how famous or obscure, the membership of the HWA is a kind, nurturing, and encouraging clique.
On the weekend of June 12, 2009, in Burbank, CA., at the Marriott Airport Hotel and Convention Center, it was all about the writers. With the Pitchfest Screenwriters doing their thing in one building, and the HWA in another, there were nonstop courtyard crossovers as writers of all ilk traded stories and shared their wisdom with one another.
This year's HWA Weekend was graced with the presence of genre big-shots Richard Matheson (I Am Legend, Kolchak: The Night Stalker) and John Farris (The Fury, Minotaur), writer and director Mick Garris (The Stand, Development Hell, Masters of Horror), Lifetime Achievement Award winners F. Paul Wilson (the Repairman Jack series) and Chelsea Quinn Yarbro (the vampiric St. Germain series), publisher and all around horror-cheerleader Del Howison (co-owner of Dark Delicacies Bookstore in Burbank), as well as rising writer-stars Gary A. Braunbeck, Rhodi Hawk, Nate Kenyon, Weston Osche, Maria Alexander, and Gregory Lamberson.
Click here for our photo gallery, exclusive to Horror.com — Special thanks to event organizers Lisa Morton and John R. Little for all the great access!
And the victims are…
Superior Achievement in a NOVEL: DUMA KEY by Stephen King (Scribner)
Superior Achievement in a FIRST NOVEL: THE GENTLING BOX by Lisa Mannetti (Dark Hart Press)
Superior Achievement in LONG FICTION: MIRANDA by John R. Little (Bad Moon Books)
Superior Achievement in SHORT FICTION: THE LOST by Sarah Langan (Cemetery Dance chapbook)
Superior Achievement in an ANTHOLOGY: UNSPEAKABLE HORROR edited by Vince A. Liaguno and Chad Helder (Dark Scribe Press)
Superior Achievement in a COLLECTION: JUST AFTER SUNSET by Stephen King (Scribner)
Superior Achievement in NONFICTION: A HALLOWE’EN ANTHOLOGY by Lisa Morton (McFarland)
Superior Achievement in POETRY: THE NIGHTMARE COLLECTION by Bruce Boston (Dark Regions Press)
From Stephen King's DUMA KEY flyleaf:
No more than a dark pencil line on a blank page. A horizon line, maybe. But also a slot for blackness to pour through...
A terrible construction site accident takes Edgar Freemantle's right arm and scrambles his memory and his mind, leaving him with little but rage as he begins the ordeal of rehabilitation. A marriage that produced two lovely daughters suddenly ends, and Edgar begins to wish he hadn't survived the injuries that could have killed him. He wants out. His psychologist, Dr. Kamen, suggests a "geographic cure," a new life distant from the Twin Cities and the building business Edgar grew from scratch. And Kamen suggests something else.
"Edgar, does anything make you happy?"
"I used to sketch."
"Take it up again. You need hedges... hedges against the night."
Edgar leaves Minnesota for a rented house on Duma Key, a stunningly beautiful, eerily undeveloped splinter of the Florida coast. The sun setting into the Gulf of Mexico and the tidal rattling of shells on the beach call out to him, and Edgar draws. A visit from Ilse, the daughter he dotes on, starts his movement out of solitude. He meets a kindred spirit in Wireman, a man reluctant to reveal his own wounds, and then Elizabeth Eastlake, a sick old woman whose roots are tangled deep in Duma Key. Now Edgar paints, sometimes feverishly, his exploding talent both a wonder and a weapon. Many of his paintings have a power that cannot be controlled. When Elizabeth's past unfolds and the ghosts of her childhood begin to appear, the damage of which they are capable is truly devastating. The tenacity of love, the perils of creativity, the mysteries of memory and the nature of the supernatural -- Stephen King gives us a novel as fascinating as it is gripping and terrifying.
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