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Boston, MA (May 2015) – In recognition of the legacy of Shirley Jackson’s writing, and with permission of the author’s estate, The Shirley Jackson Awards, Inc. has been established for outstanding achievement in the literature of psychological suspense, horror, and the dark fantastic.

The Shirley Jackson Awards are voted upon by a jury of professional writers, editors, critics, and academics, with input from a Board of Advisors. The awards are given for the best work published in the preceding calendar year in the following categories: Novel, Novella, Novelette, Short Story, Single-Author Collection, and Edited Anthology.

The nominees for the 2014 Shirley Jackson Awards are:

NOVEL

• Annihilation, Jeff VanderMeer (FSG Originals)
• Bird Box, Josh Malerman (Ecco)
• Broken Monsters, Lauren Beukes (Mulholland)
• Confessions, Kanae Minato (Mulholland)
• The Lesser Dead, Christopher Buehlman (Berkley)
• The Unquiet House, Alison Littlewood (Jo Fletcher Books)

NOVELLA

• The Beauty, Aliya Whiteley (Unsung Stories)
• Ceremony of Flies, Kate Jonez (DarkFuse)
• The Good Shabti, Robert Sharp (Jurassic London)
• The Mothers of Voorhisville, Mary Rickert (Tor.com, April 2014)
• We Are All Completely Fine, Daryl Gregory (Tachyon)

NOVELETTE

• “The Devil in America,” Kai Ashante Wilson (Tor.com, April 2014)
• “The End of the End of Everything,” Dale Bailey (Tor.com, April 2014)
• “The Husband Stitch,” Carmen Maria Machado (Granta)
• “Newspaper Heart,” Stephen Volk (The Spectral Book of Horror Stories, Spectral Press)
• “Office at Night,” Kate Bernheimer and Laird Hunt (Walker Art Center/ Coffee House Press)
• “The Quiet Room,” V H Leslie (Shadows & Tall Trees 2014, Undertow Publications/ChiZine Publications)

SHORT FICTION

• “Candy Girl,” Chikodili Emelumadu (Apex Magazine, November 2014)
• “The Dogs Home,” Alison Littlewood (The Spectral Book of Horror Stories, Spectral Press)
• “The Fisher Queen,” Alyssa Wong (The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, May/June 2014)
• “Shay Corsham Worsted,” Garth Nix (Fearful Symmetries, ChiZine Publications)
• “Wendigo Nights,” Siobhan Carroll (Fearful Symmetries, ChiZine Publications)

SINGLE-AUTHOR COLLECTION

• After the People Lights Have Gone Off, Stephen Graham Jones (Dark House)
• Burnt Black Suns:  A Collection of Weird Tales, Simon Strantzas (Hippocampus)
• Gifts for the One who Comes After, Helen Marshall (ChiZine Publications)
• They Do The Same Things Different There, Robert Shearman (ChiZine Publications)
• Unseaming, Mike Allen (Antimatter Press)

EDITED ANTHOLOGY

• Letters to Lovecraft, edited by Jesse Bullington (Stone Skin Press)
• Fearful Symmetries, edited by Ellen Datlow (ChiZine Publications)
• The Spectral Book of Horror Stories, edited by Mark Morris (Spectral Press)
• Shadows & Tall Trees 2014, edited by Michael Kelly (Undertow Publications/ChiZine Publications)
• The Children of Old Leech: A Tribute to the Carnivorous Cosmos of Laird Barron, edited by Ross E. Lockhart and Justin Steele (Word Horde)

Shirley Jackson (1916-1965) wrote such classic novels as The Haunting of Hill House and We Have Always Lived in the Castle, as well as one of the most famous short stories in the English language, “The Lottery.” Her work continues to be a major influence on writers of every kind of fiction, from the most traditional genre offerings to the most innovative literary work.

Congratulations to all the nominees.

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And don’t forget, I’m teaching a horror-writing LitReactor class in June that directly benefits the Shirley Jackson Awards!  For more information, click here.

This week on The Scariest Part, my guest is M. Darusha Wehm, whose latest novel is Children of Arkadia. Here is the publisher’s description:

Kaus wants nothing more than to be loved while its human counterpart, Raj Patel, believes fervently in freedom. Arkadia, one of four space stations circling Jupiter, was to be a refuge for all who fought the corrupt systems of old Earth, a haven where both humans and Artificial Intelligences could be happy and free. But the old prejudices and desires are still at play and, no matter how well-meaning its citizens, the children of Arkadia have tough compromises to make.

When the future of humanity is at stake, which will prove more powerful: freedom or happiness? What sacrifices will Kaus, Raj, and the rest of Arkadia’s residents have to make to survive?

And now, let’s hear what the scariest part was for M. Darusha Wehm:

Children of Arkadia is a story about a utopia gone wrong. Like all expressions of the ideal, many would argue that the society I imagine in the book was wrong from the beginning; however it is, in many ways, a world in which I’d personally like to live. So I can’t deny that it was difficult, painful, and not a little scary to take my own idea of a better world and make it all fall apart.

The Arkadia space habitat is a double-whammy of wish fulfilment for me: since I was eight years old I’ve wanted to live in space, and since I was a teenager I’ve idly dreamed up better ways of living in community. My background is in political science and I’ve spent countless evenings over coffee or beer arguing about the precise layout of the best of all possible worlds. So it might not be surprising to learn that the first iteration of the novel that would become Children of Arkadia was entirely wish-fulfillment. It was a thin plot with no real conflict that existed solely to prop up this world I’d imagined that was essentially my vision of an orbiting paradise.

It was enjoyable to write but when I finished it I knew it wasn’t a real novel. I knew there was something wrong, something missing, so I put it aside. Years later I returned to that story, those characters and that place, knowing what was wrong. It was that I’d subconsciously come to realize all the little ways in which my lovely utopian society was broken, flawed and utterly imperfect.

It was hard to take this world I’d love to live in and figure out what was wrong with it, but I found that I couldn’t help myself. I don’t know if it was all those years of debating politics and theory, or if the shiny newness of Arkadia had simply worn off, but I was compelled to pick at the seams. I had to move beyond the surface and see what could happen when people of good intentions but different perspectives found themselves in conflict. Can good people do bad things for good reasons? What if people are doing what they believe is right and best, but others disagree? What if you don’t want to be treated the way I want to be treated?

Everyone is the hero of their own story and I realized that even in a world where people honestly strive to be good and kind there will always be conflicts — and those differences could be catastrophic. So I had to make my lovely, perfect space orbital a little less lovely and entirely imperfect.

It’s a scary thing to have to coldly examine one’s own vision of the ideal and see the flaws and pits. But it makes for a much more interesting story. And, ideally, helps to galvanize an idea of how a better world could really be achieved.

M. Darusha Wehm: Website / Facebook / Twitter / Google+

Children of Arkadia: Amazon / Barnes & Noble / Powell’s / IndieBound

M. Darusha Wehm is the three-time Parsec Award shortlisted author of the novels Beautiful Red, Self Made, Act of Will and The Beauty of Our Weapons. She is the editor of the crime and mystery magazine Plan B. She is from Canada, but currently lives in Wellington, New Zealand after spending the past several years traveling at sea on her sailboat.

Welcome to this week’s installment of The Scariest Part, a recurring feature in which authors, comic book writers, filmmakers, and game creators tell us what scares them in their latest works of horror, dark fantasy, dark science fiction, and suspense. (If you’d like to be featured on The Scariest Part, please review the guidelines here.)

My guest is Pamela Crane, whose latest novel is A Secondhand Life. (On a personal note, I love the cover art and think it’s among the best I’ve seen this year!) Here is the publisher’s description:

In a freak collision when she was twelve, Mia Germaine faced death and the loss of her father. A heart transplant from a young murder victim saved her life, but not without a price. Twenty years later, chilling nightmares about an unresolved homicide begin to plague Mia. Compelled by these lost memories, she forms a complicated connection to the victim — the girl killed the night of Mia’s accident — due to a scientific phenomenon called “organ memory.”

Now suffocating beneath the weight of avenging a dead girl and catching a serial killer on the loose dubbed the “Triangle Terror,” Mia must dodge her own demons while unimaginable truths torment her — along with a killer set on making her his next victim.

As Mia tries to determine if her dreams are clues or disturbing phantasms, uninvited specters lead her further into danger’s path, costing her the one person who can save her from herself. More than a page-turning thriller, A Secondhand Life weaves a tale of second chances and reclaimed dreams as this taut, refreshing tale ensnares and penetrates you.

And now, let’s hear what the scariest part was for Pamela Crane:

I consider myself a pretty fearless person. I skydive. I ride and work with untrained horses. (Wanna see a rodeo? Come to my house!) So it takes a lot to scare me. What is the scariest thing I can imagine? The dark — not at all, because I love to sleep. Creepy critters — nah, because I can squish ’em. Heights — nope, because I can simply move to a safer place. Even being at the hands of a psychopath, while scary, at least gives me a glimmer of hope that maybe, just maybe, I can talk him out of sadistically dissecting me while I’m conscious. (Please mercifully kill me first.)

The scariest thing to me: Losing my mind and being unable to stop it.

I like the fact that I can control my actions and thoughts. But what if that power were to be stripped from me? What if something — or someone — else took over my mind, something sadistic that plagued me with nightmares that I couldn’t stop, and compelled me to do things I didn’t want to do? That’s pretty darn scary to me.

My thriller, A Secondhand Life, is a story about this scary scenario. Have you ever wondered what it would feel like to be possessed by another person? In real life I met someone who suffered this type of existence — and it wasn’t quack science or supernatural phenomenon. Due to a health condition, he was an organ recipient. Shortly after a lung transplant, he started “seeing” things, experiencing memories that weren’t his, and even his tastes started to change. He expressed just how overwhelming and, yes, scary it felt to be in this position. Luckily these memories weren’t anything creepy, but in A Secondhand Life, the protagonist, Mia Germaine, receives a heart transplant from a murder victim — a young girl, and the first in a string of killings. Mia must witness horrid, chilling nightmares of this murder, which eventually leads her down a dark journey straight into the path of the serial killer dubbed the “Triangle Terror.”

In researching this science called “organ memory,” where our organs retain parts of ourselves that can be transferred to an organ recipient, I read about haunting experiences that I transcribed into my own character’s life. Being forced to relive gruesome details and physical pain that often accompany these memories, Mia must survive the havoc this wreaks on her psyche in order to dig for clues amidst the blood and guts.

Does she endure the ordeal and capture the villain, avenging the lives of the victims? Is she able to conquer these demons to find peace from these grim phantasms? Is it possible to recapture your mind once it’s lost? Find out by picking up a copy of A Secondhand Life, available where books are sold.

Pamela Crane: Website / Facebook

A Secondhand Life: Amazon / Barnes & Noble / iTunes / Kobo

Pamela Crane is a North Carolinian writer of the best-selling psychological thriller The Admirer’s Secret, A Fatal Affair, and A Secondhand Life. Along with being a wife and mom of three rug rats, she is a wannabe psychologist, though most people just think she needs to see one. She’s a member of the ITW, ACFW, and EFA, and has been involved in the ECPA, Christy Awards, and Romance Writers of America. Along with delving into people’s minds — or being the subject of their research — she enjoys being a literary reviewer and riding her proud Arabian horse, when he lets her. She has a passion for adventure, and her hopes are to keep earning enough from her writing to travel the world in search of more good story material. Grab a free book on her website.

The Best Horror of the Year, Volume Six by Ellen Datlow

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Calling anything the best of the year is a tricky proposition. Taste is subjective; one person’s trash is another person’s treasure. However, I’ve never read an Ellen Datlow anthology that I didn’t think was top-notch, so I’ve come to trust her taste implicitly. While there were a small handful of stories in this volume that didn’t resonate with me the way they clearly must have for Datlow, overall this is a very strong sampling of short-form horror fiction from 2013. Among the standouts for me were “The Good Husband” by Nathan Ballingrud, which might be my favorite story of the bunch, “The Soul in the Bell Jar” by KJ Kabza, “That Tiny Flutter of the Heart I Used to Call Love” by Robert Shearman, “The Monster Makers” by Steve Rasnic Tem, “The Only Ending We Have” by Kim Newman, “Fine In the Fire” by Lee Thomas, which is another favorite, and “Jaws of Saturn” by Laird Barron. This is my first time reading a volume of THE BEST HORROR OF THE YEAR but it certainly won’t be the last. Recommended for fans of horror, and also for writers interested in learning how great short-form horror fiction works.

View all my reviews