The 2009 Black Quill Award Nominations pt. 3

Martyrs and Monsters

Author: Dunbar, Robert
Format: Trade Paperback
Type: Short Story Collection
Page Count: 276pp.
Pub. Date: March 30, 2009
Publisher: DarkHart Press

Nominated for the 2009 Black Quill Award for the Best Dark Genre Fiction Collection

“The demented lovechild of Faulkner and King” — HellNotes

Robert Dunbar has been called one of the “saviors of contemporary dark fiction” and an “avatar of literary horror.”

Martyrs and Monsters runs the gamut of this extraordinary author’s narrative range, embracing vampires and sea serpents, werewolves and swamp creatures . . . as well as a host of nightmares for which no names exist.

Whether set on an orbiting space station or within a haunted tenement, these terrifying tales are steeped in a passionate intensity that renders them all but unique within the genre, and all boast a sophistication that qualifies them as that rarest of rare commodities:

Horror for intelligent adults.

“Gritty and savage . . . profound and quietly devastating . . . as much intellectual as visceral. Despite all the mayhem, a consistent humanity manifests itself, a glimmer of hope in all the madness. Quite simply, this collection represents dark fiction as it should be-chilling, entertaining, intelligent.” — From the introduction by Greg F. Gifune

Monstrous Affections

Author: Nickle, David
Format: Trade Paperback
Type: Short Story Collection
Page Count: 296pp.
Pub. Date: October 1, 2009
Publisher: ChiZine Publications
Also Pub: 2009 (e-book — ChiZine Publications)

Nominated for the 2009 Black Quill Award for the Best Dark Genre Fiction Collection

A young bride and her future mother-in-law risk everything to escape it. A repentant father summons help from a pot of tar to ensure it. A starving woman learns from howling winds and a whispering host, just how fulfilling it can finally be.

Can it be love?

Bram Stoker Award-winning author David Nickle takes multiple stabs at the question in his first collection of short fiction, Monstrous Affections. Three stories are published here for the first time. Others have appeared in places like Cemetery Dance, The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror, Queer Fear 2, and the Northern Frights series.

Monstrous Affections also features an introduction by award-winning editor, author and journalist Michael Rowe.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction: The Geniality of Monsters by Michael Rowe
• The Sloan Men
• Janie and the Wind
• Night of the Tar Baby
• Other People’s Kids
• The Mayor Will Make a Brief Statement and Then Take Questions
• The Pit-Heads
• Slide Trombone
• The Inevitability of Earth
• Swamp Witch and the Tea-Drinking Man
• The Delilah Party
• Fly in Your Eye
• Polyphemus’ Cave
• The Webley

Pumpkin Teeth

Author: Cardamone, Tom
Format: Trade Paperback
Type: Short Story Collection
Page Count: 184pp.
Pub. Date: October 23, 2009
Publisher: Lethe Press

Nominated for the 2009 Black Quill Award for the Best Dark Genre Fiction Collection

Let Tom Cardamone lead you into his wicked universe of changelings and mysterious creatures, where a boy transforms into lightning and illuminates his emerging sexuality. Where a man accidentally receives a package meant for his neighbor, a situation complicated by the fact that he lives next door to a Sphinx. A nurse finds herself working in a retirement home for vampires, while in the future a man questions his decision to live life as a manatee.

Featuring tales of quiet suburban anomie, to superhero tropes, to intense erotic horror, Pumpkin Teeth spans the range from Palahniuk insanity to Bradburyesque tenderness.

Warning, once you are bitten by Pumpkin Teeth, it will not let you go.

The Haunted Heart And Other Tales

Author: Currier, Jameson
Format: Trade Paperback
Type: Short Story Collection
Page Count: 212pp.
Pub. Date: September 15, 2009
Publisher: Lethe Press

Nominated for the 2009 Black Quill Award for the Best Dark Genre Fiction Collection

Haunted?

. . . Or blessed?

Ghosts?

. . . Or guardian angels?

Twelve new stories of gay men and the memories that haunt them.

A circuit boy stays at a haunted hotel. An actor recounts a grisly murder in the English countryside. A gay parent unravels a mysterious souvenir. A journalist chases a story through the streets of Amsterdam. An artist grapples with his muse. A musician is inspired by the spirit of a sailor.

Acclaimed author Jameson Currier modernizes the traditional ghost story with gay lovers, loners, activists, and addicts, blending history and contemporary issues of the gay community with the unexpected of the supernatural.

Ugly Man

Author: Cooper, Dennis
Format: Trade Paperback
Type: Short Story Collection
Page Count: 272pp.
Pub. Date: May 26, 2009
Publisher: Harper Perennial

Nominated for the 2009 Black Quill Award for the Best Dark Genre Fiction Collection

“The most dangerous writer in America” is back with an uncommon book of death and comedy.

Internationally acclaimed writer Dennis Cooper continues to study the material he’s always explored honestly, but does so now — in stories — with a sense of awareness and a satirical touch that exploits and winks at his mastery of this world.

As it has done for decades, Cooper’s taut, controlled prose lays bare the compulsions and troubling emptiness of the human soul.

Table of Contents:

• Jerk
• Ugly Man
• The Boy on the Far Left
• Graduate Seminar
• Santa Claus vs. Johnny Crawford
• The Hostage Drama
• The Brainiacs
• Knife/Tape/Rope
• The Guro Artists
• The Anal-Retentive Line Editor
• Oliver Twink
• Brian aka “Bear”
• Three Boys Who Thought Experimental Fiction was for Pussies
• The Worst (1960-1971)
• One Night in 1979 I Did Too Much Coke and Couldn’t Sleep and Had What I Thought Was a Million-Dollar Idea to Write the Definitive Tell-all Book About Glam Rock Based on My Own Personal Experience but This Is as Far as I Got
• The Noll Dynasty
• The Fifteen Worst Russian Gay Porn Web Sites
• The Ash Gray Proclamation