We’re bringing you a special series presenting the 2009 Black Quill Award Nominations presented by the Dark Scribe Magazine.
Today we’ll look at the second award category: Best Small Press Chill.
Best Small Press Chill
As it sounds like, this award goes to the author of a “novel or novella published by small press publisher.”
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As Fate Would Have ItAuthor: Calvillo, Michael Louis |
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Nominated for the 2009 Black Quill Award for Best Small Press Chill Montgomery, a gourmet chef on the fast track to fame, has a teensy weensy problem. He’s a murderous cannibal addicted to human flesh. Guilt and worry eat his brain and beg him to stop, but his headstrong girlfriend Liz won’t let him quit. She blames Montgomery for getting her hooked on the succulent meat and refuses to curb her carnal urges. Ashley, a twenty-something trying to figure her place in life, desperately wants to kick the nasty heroin habit she acquired with her boyfriend Henry a year and a half ago. Henry wants to make Ashley happy and quit, but no matter how hard he tries he can’t seem to resist the drug’s consuming pull. As Montgomery and Ashley struggle with codependence, with love, with loss, with sorrow and regret they seek to find salvation in the unlikeliest of places — each other. |
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Frozen BloodAuthor: Sutherland, Joel A. |
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Nominated for the 2009 Black Quill Award for Best Small Press Chill As Tara Stewart drives through the dark, winter night, from Charlotte to Ottawa, she’s haunted by ghosts from her past. Summoned to her abusive father’s funeral, she hasn’t been home, or spoken to her family, in years. The last place she wants to be is in the company of her vindictive twin sister, Evelyn, and her brother-in-law, Peter. The hail begins to fall. Thanks to treacherous road conditions, she barely makes it to her destination. Upon arriving, she falls on the icy driveway, slamming her knee into concrete and compact snow. Evelyn and Peter pull her inside, just as she is losing consciousness. Outside, the hailstorm still rages. Reports on the news suggest it’s a worldwide phenomenon. Globally, resulting damage and death is reaching catastrophic levels. Now a prisoner in her father’s old mansion, stuck with her estranged twin and brother-in-law, Tara must try to survive the worst storm in modern history. She soon discovers the storm is not her only enemy. Her family — and the house itself — seem intent on her destruction. Can she survive the undying hailstorm, and whispered threats from her ghosts, who swear the end is near? |
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KellandAuthor: Bens Jr.,Paul G. |
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Nominated for the 2009 Black Quill Award for Best Small Press Chill When the Truth Is All That Matters — The truth begins with a family evacuated from Saigon during the final days of the Viet Nam War. Or perhaps it begins later, with a devoutly Catholic child with the voice of an angel who is troubled by visions both sacred and profane. Or perhaps later still, with a couple drifting apart following a tragedy. Kelland appears to them all in the guise of a small boy, a lover, a priest . . . Kelland is an enigma, a puzzle, and an almost imperceptible presence. Kelland is violence, sorrow, and joy. Kelland is the common thread tying five disparate strangers together. |
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Last DaysAuthor: Evenson, Brian |
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Nominated for the 2009 Black Quill Award for Best Small Press Chill Intense and profoundly unsettling, Brian Evenson’s Last Days is a down-the-rabbit-hole detective novel set in an underground religious cult. The story follows Kline, a brutally dismembered detective forcibly recruited to solve a murder inside the cult. As Kline becomes more deeply involved with the group, he begins to realize the stakes are higher than he previously thought. Attempting to find his way through a maze of lies, threats, and misinformation, Kline discovers that his survival depends on an act of sheer will. Last Days was first published in 2003 as a limited edition novella titled The Brotherhood of Mutilation. Its success led Evenson to expand the story into a full-length novel. In doing so, he has created a work that’s disturbing, deeply satisfying, and completely original. |
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The Harlequin and The Train: A NovellaAuthor: Tremblay, Paul G. |
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Nominated for the 2009 Black Quill Award for Best Small Press Chill The Harlequin and The Train is an experimental fiction narrative that requires you to interact with it using a simple yellow highlighter. This novella is about paranoia, choice, and the horror of individual and collective consequence: Rudy has only been on the job as a train engineer for a few months. While at the helm of a commuter train headed to Boston, Massachusetts, it hits a harlequin clown, and in the chaotic aftermath, he witnesses the horrific and inexplicable actions of a group of people who were seemingly laying in wait for the accident. There are other accidents and as the group infiltrates his life (present and past), and as random global acts of violence and suffering seem to be connected, what Rudy believes about others and himself will be forever warped as he makes his final choice. |
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Valley of the DeadAuthor: Paffenroth, Kim |
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Nominated for the 2009 Black Quill Award for Best Small Press Chill For seventeen years of his life, the whereabouts of the medieval Italian poet Dante Alighieri is unknown to modern scholars. All we know is that during this time, he traveled as an exile across Europe, while working on his epic poem, The Divine Comedy. In his masterpiece he describes a journey through the three realms of the afterlife. The volume describing hell, Inferno, is the most famous section. Valley of the Dead is the real story behind Inferno. In his wanderings, Dante stumbles on a zombie infestation, and the things he sees there — people being devoured, burned alive, boiled in pitch, torn limb from limb, eviscerated, impaled, decapitated, crucified, etc. — become the basis of all the horrors he describes in Inferno. Afraid to be labeled a madman, Dante made the terrors he witnessed into a more “believable” account of an otherworldly adventure with demons and mythological monsters, but now the real story can finally be told. A novella by Kim Paffenroth, with cover art by Alex McVey. |
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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
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