The 2010 Shirley Jackson Awards

This year the 2010 Shirley Jackson Awards will be presented at ReaderCon 22 on July 14-17, 2011 at the Burlington Marriott Hotel in Burlington, Massachusetts. Horror Books, dark fantasy and psychological suspense books are eligible for this award.

I did a series of posts listing all the nominations for the Shirley Jackson Award this year. You can check them out by clicking on the links below.

The 2009 Shirley Jackson Award Nominations Series:

Part 1 -- The Shirley Jackson Award Nominations for Best Novel
Part 2 -- The Shirley Jackson Award Nominations for Best Novella
Part 3 -- The Shirley Jackson Award Nominations for Best Novelette
Part 4 -- The Shirley Jackson Award Nominations for Best Short Story
Part 5 -- The Shirley Jackson Award Nominations for Best Edited Anthology
Part 6 -- The Shirley Jackson Award Nominations for Best Single-Author Collection
Part 7 -- Presenting the Shirley Jackson Award Winners

The 2009 Shirley Jackson Awards

This year the 2009 Shirley Jackson Awards will be presented at ReaderCon 21 on July 8-11, 2010 at the Burlington Marriott Hotel in Burlington, Massachusetts.

The Award Ceremony will be Sunday morning, July 11, 2010. The host for this year’s awards will be noted author Nalo Hopkinson.

I did a series of posts at Horror Books with the Undead Rat listing all the nominations for the Shirley Jackson Award this year. You can check them out by clicking on the links below.

The 2009 Shirley Jackson Award Nominations Series:

Part 1 -- The Shirley Jackson Award Nominations for Best Novel
Part 2 -- The Shirley Jackson Award Nominations for Best Novella
Part 3 -- The Shirley Jackson Award Nominations for Best Novelette
Part 4 -- The Shirley Jackson Award Nominations for Best Edited Anthology
Part 5 -- The Shirley Jackson Award Nominations for Best Short Story
Part 6 -- The Shirley Jackson Award Nominations for Best Single-Author Collection
Part 7 -- Presenting the Shirley Jackson Award Winners

The Third Annual Black Quill Awards

One of the newest awards for horror books is the Black Quill Awards. This year saw the Third Annual Black Quill Awards held by Dark Scribe Magazine.

The awards focus on horror fiction and are unique in that there are two awards presented for each category. One is the Editor's Choice Award and the other is the Reader's Choice Award which was determined by open voting by the magazine subscribers.

Below is a list of posts that appeared on my blog. The first eight lists the nominations in each category and the last lists the award winners.

The books in these lists have links to online bookstores in case any of them peak your interest.

The 2009 Black Quill Award Nominations Series:

Part 1 -- Dark Genre Novel of the Year
Part 2 -- Best Small Press Chill
Part 3 -- Best Dark Genre Fiction Collection
Part 4 -- Best Dark Genre Anthology
Part 5 -- Best Dark Genre Book Of Non-Fiction
Part 6 -- Best Dark Scribble
Part 7 -- Best Cover Art and Design
Part 8 -- Best Dark Genre Book Trailer
Part 9 -- The 2009 Black Quill Award Winners

Introducing Horror Mall

Not long ago on my website about horror books I ran a series of articles exploring the online book store called Horror Mall.

Horror Mall caters to the horror fiction book collector and the avid reader who is looking for that ever elusive next-great-scare.

If you love horror fiction then Horror Mall should be prominently bookmarked on your web browser. Drop in frequently and check out what's new.

These entries were linked to an online bookstore in case a reader wanted more information or to purchase the book.

Below are the links to the entire series:

Introduction to Horror Mall Series:

Part 1 -- What is Horror Mall, Anyway?
Part 2 -- How Can I Find Stuff at Horror Mall?
Part 3 -- How Do I Purchase Stuff at Horror Mall?
Part 4 -- The Digital Download from Horror Mall
Part 5 -- What if I Have Problems at Horror Mall?
Part 6 -- Some Final Words about Horror Mall

Keeping a Reading Journal Series

One of my most successful series of articles is not directly about Horror Books. Rather it is the three article series I ran about keeping a reading journal.

Why keep a journal, what should be in a journal, what kind of journal should I use? All these and more are discussed in this series.

Part 1 -- Keep a Reading Journal for Your Horror Fiction Books
Part 2 -- A Reading Journal Information Gathering System
Part 3 -- Designer Reading Journals

The 2008 Stoker Award Nominations and Winners

Recently on my website Horror Books with the Undead Rat I ran a series detailing the 2008 Stoker Award Nominations and the Winners for my readers to see.

These entries were linked to an online bookstore in case a reader wanted more information or to purchase the book.

Below are the links to the entire series:

The 2008 Stoker Award Nominations:

Part 1 -- Superior Achievement in a Novel and First Novel
Part 2 -- Superior Achievement in Long Fiction and Short Fiction
Part 3 -- Superior Achievement in an Anthology and a Collection
Part 4 -- Superior Achievement in Nonfiction and Poetry
Part 5 -- Bram Stoker Award for Lifetime Achievement and other awards.

The 2008 Stoker Award Winners:

The 2008 Stoker Award Winners

The 2008 Shirley Jackson Awards

Recently on my website Horror Books with the Undead Rat I ran a series detailing the 2008 Shirley Jackson Award nominations and the winners for my readers to see.

These entries were linked to an online bookstore in case a reader wanted more information or to purchase the book.

Below are the links to the entire series:

The 2008 Shirley Jackson Award Nominations and Winners Series:

Part 1 -- The 2008 Shirley Jackson Awards Nominations pt. 1
Part 2 -- The 2008 Shirley Jackson Awards Nominations pt. 2
Part 3 -- The 2008 Shirley Jackson Awards Nominations pt. 3
Part 4 -- The 2008 Shirley Jackson Award Winners

Where is the Undead Rat?

I periodically publish a list of websites where I've set up shop, in case you'd like to come in and have a look around. I expect some websites I'll make a permanent residence while others I'll check out and eventually leave.

The Undead Rat's Outposts on the Internet Superhighway of Life:

1. Horror Books with the Undead Rat: This is my permanent home where I store lists of books by author, by series and by themes. I have lists of websites that talk about horror and I have a blog where I tend to focus on horror fiction.
2. Game Master's Open Gaming Resource: D&D Campaign Worlds with d20 Modern Variants: Formerly called The GamerRat, this website is dedicated to role-playing games -- mostly the pen and paper kind -- and on this site I'll be building a world of outright horror using the d20 system.
3. The Lair of the Undead Rat is my not for profit Heights Library sponsored blog which is getting a face-lift this year. Basically this blog has been all about the non-horror books and graphic novels I read but this year I'm going to focus on the library's MP3 and ebook offerings.
4. So Saith The Undead Rat: My blogger blog. This will become my personal blog.
5. The Undead Rat's Blog on LiveJournal: This is just cross-posting . . . With Intent to Commit Horror.
6. The Secrets of the Undead Rat is my Squidoo hub page where you can find out things about me and get links to the horror booklists I did for the Halloween themed Squidboo Project.
7. The Undead Rat's MySpace: My most successful network forum to date. I've met a lot of writers through MySpace. I also have the largest following of all the blogs I do not personally own, here.
8. My FaceBook: This link may not work if you don't already subscribe to FaceBook. I'm creating a fan page for the Undead Rat. I'll put the URL here when it goes public.
9. The Undead Rat's Twitter Profile: I'm just beginning to learn how to use Twitter. I announce each post here but I want to do more with it in 2010.
10. LibraryThing: This is my profile. Here I am collecting all of the books I own in my library. I try to update this on a monthly basis. There are still a great many books in my collection which haven't been inventoried yet. Needs updating.
11. GoodReads: This is my profile. Here I list all the books I've read, whether I own them or not. Needs updating.
12. The Undead Rat's YouTube Account: Here I've begun to collect trailers for horror novels and Amanda Palmer music videos as I find them.
13. The Undead Rat's Lists of Bests: See how many Stoker and IHG award winning novels I've read and how many more I have yet to read.
14. Yahoo Answers: Yes, I've even tried my furry paw at Yahoo Answers. Lack of time, more than anything ended my participation here.
15. 43 Things: Actually the Undead Rat's profile will let you see 43 Things, 43 People and 43 Places.
16. The Undead Rat's Del.icio.us: This is a list of links I find interesting and want to visit again later.

There's a lot out there. I've only just scratched the surface. Where do you hang out? Is there a website you think I should be checking out? Drop me a comment and let me know.

(Based on a post originally published in my blog about Horror Books)

Did You Know?

Did you know about whatsmyipaddress.com where you can find out instantly what your I.P. address is?

How about downforeveryoneorjustme.com? You can plug in any web address and find out if the website is down or if it's your connection or internet provider that is preventing you from getting to that website.

And hidemyass.com -- did you know you could use this free web proxy to travel the internet with your identity hidden?

How did I find out about these websites?

Well, I run several websites using Godaddy.com hosting services. This morning as I was working on Horror Books with the Undead Rat, the browser suddenly couldn't access the website at all. It looked as if the entire site had crashed.

When my wife called GoDaddy, they had her use whatsmyipaddress.com to find out what I.P. Address we had.

Then he had her use downforeveryoneorjustme.com to see if Intent was actually down or if it was something that prevented us from seeing it. The website told us that Intent was still up and running -- which was a great relief to me.

Finally we used hidemyass.com to verify that the website was up and that for some reason we were being blocked from seeing it. Sure enough I was able to see and interact with my website about horror books.

Minutes later, GoDaddy had fixed the problem and I could access Intent without a proxy. Happiness is restored.

And I learned about three great websites in the process.

Why I missed a couple day's posts

I took Wednesday off to take my autistic/albino son to the eye doctors. It was actually a whole family affair. It was a long drawn out affair because my son hates the eye drops that dilate the eyes and was uncooperative from that moment on.

The next day my wife and daughter were sick. My daughter got a morning appointment and we discovered she has pneumonia. That is a nasty illness to have at seven years. When I got home with Little Miss Sickness, I had to turn around and fetch my son from school as he was covered in spots and the school nurse was certain he had scarlet fever.

My wife had the next doctor's appointment. I was worried she'd have pneumonia because her symptoms seemed to mirror my daughter's. Well she only had strep throat. Not good but not the big P, either. Finally I took my son to the doctor. To my relief he did not have scarlet fever. He was having an allergic reaction to the Amoxicillian that was prescribed last week to fight the strep that both kids had.

Afterward I had to get medicine from a pharmacy that had never heard of the benefits of good customer service. I wasted a lot of time waiting for meds.

By the time I got home I was too beat and too miffed to focus on writing a post. So I let it slide. I am sorry I posted nothing (except for a pre-made post in Buy Books the Holidays) until today. However I felt no post was more desirable than a post of poor quality.

So let me ask you, did I make the right call?