The winners of the 2004 Bram Stoker Awards were announced last weekend. Alas, this newsletter and my fiction collection, 100 Jolts — which were finalists — did not earn the trophy, but the old cliche is true: it truly was “an honor to be nominated” by my peers in the horror field.

There are several highlights in the winner’s list, and I applaud everyone. But I think I’m clapping loudest for Hellnotes newsletter, which won the Stoker for Superior Achievement in Non-Fiction. As many readers of The Goreletter know, I contribute a weekly version of “Instigation: Twisted Prompts for Sicko Writers” to Hellnotes (in fact, a special 100th anniversary celebration is forthcoming) and it feels good to be a small part of a winning serial. Congratulations, especially, to editor Judi Rohrig.

I was also happy to see that The Devil’s Wine (reviewed here last October) won the Bram Stoker award in the “Alternative Forms” category. Many congratulations to Tom Piccirilli for his courageous support of horror poetry.