Shirley Jackson Awards Ballot

As everybody else and their dog has already noted, the ballot for the 2010 Shirley Jackson Awards is finally out. I had a lot of fun reading for, and voting on, this list, which provides a nice little overview of dark fiction for the year. Not perfect, of course--but then, what is?

NOVEL
Dark Matter, Michelle Paver (Orion)
A Dark Matter, Peter Straub (Doubleday)
Feed, Mira Grant (Orbit)
Mr. Shivers, Robert Jackson Bennett (Orbit)
The Reapers Are the Angels, Alden Bell (Holt)
The Silent Land, Graham Joyce (Gollancz)

NOVELLA
The Broken Man, Michael Byers (PS Publishing)
Chasing the Dragon, Nicholas Kaufmann, (Chizine Publications)
“Mysterium Tremendum”, Laird Barron (Occultation, Night Shade)
One Bloody Thing After Another, Joey Comeau (ECW Press)
Subtle Bodies, Peter Dubé (Lethe Press)
The Thief of Broken Toys, Tim Lebbon (Chizine Publications)

NOVELETTE
“--30--,” Laird Barron (Occultation, Night Shade)
“The Broadsword,” Laird Barron, (Black Wings, PS Publishing)
“Holderhaven,” Richard Butner, (Crimewave 11: Ghosts)
“The Redfield Girls,” Laird Barron (Haunted Legends, Tor)
“Truth Is a Cave in the Black Mountains,” Neil Gaiman (Stories: All New Tales, William Morrow)

SHORT STORY
“As Red as Red,” by Caitlin R. Kiernan (Haunted Legends, Tor)
“Booth’s Ghost,” Karen Joy Fowler (What I Didn’t See, Small Beer Press)
“The Foxes,” Lily Hoang (Haunted Legends, Tor)
“six six six,” Laird Barron (Occultation, Night Shade)
“The Things,” Peter Watts (Clarkesworld, Issue 40)

SINGLE-AUTHOR COLLECTION
Occultation, Laird Barron (Night Shade)
The Ones That Got Away, Stephen Graham Jones (Prime Books)
The Third Bear, Jeff Vandermeer (Tachyon)
What I Didn’t See, Karen Joy Fowler (Small Beer Press)
What Will Come After, Scott Edelman (PS Publishing)

EDITED ANTHOLOGY
Black Wings: Tales of Lovecraftian Horror, edited by S. T. Joshi (PS Publications)
Haunted Legends, edited by Ellen Datlow and Nick Mamatas (Tor)
My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me: Forty New Fairy Tales, edited by Kate Bernheimer (Penguin)
Stories: All New Tales, edited by Neil Gaiman and Al Sarrantonio (William Morrow)
Swords and Dark Magic: The New Sword and Sorcery, edited by Jonathan Strahan and Lou Anders (Harper Voyager)

Meanwhile, Cal is staying home--second time this week--and watching Tangled (as ever). And I'm going to finish "Black Bush".

No Living Woman

...would watch Game of Thrones, according to Ms. Moron here (http://tv.nytimes.com/2011/04/15/arts/television/game-of-thrones-begins-sunday-on-hbo-review.html). Ah, well: Nice to know what I'd always hitherto suspected, which is that my body/identity just doesn't make me "female" enough for the mainstream. The Times says it, no less! Also: Fantasy is "cheap", and nobody wants to pay attention long enough to learn characters' names if the world said characters are living in is just some skeevy made-up place. Unlike, say, the South in True Blood, where supernatural creatures abound, or the version of the 1960s featured in Mad Men, almost entirely populated by people who (sorry, Charlie!) didn't actually exist. Like in MOST FUCKING FICTION.

OTOH, "Black Bush" is finally a done motherfucker. 10,000+ words, because I am an idiot.;) And now...lunch.