- Nominees!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
- Debut Novel
- Anathema/ Nick Roberts and Breach/ Candace Nola
- Novel
- Red Light Falling and Son of the Right Hand and War of Dictates and Beast of Sorrows and Beyond the Breach
- Novella
- God in the Hills and Bloodlust and Abhorrent and Malinae and The Legion Machine and Abigail
- Poem
- Desire and Dr.Jesus Presents: The Chupacholo Learns his ABC (Ch)'s and Loop and Palache and the Leviathan and War of Dictates and Monster of Mansfield and Rapes My Soul
- Short Story
- Insatiable and It's Always Night Underground and Bone Mother and Letters From a Dead World and The Paperboy and Eighth Night and Fathers Mission and Hoard and Everything She's Looking For and The Dead Girl and Reunion and Something in the Air and Deranged Innocence and Fallen
- Cover Artist
- Hell Patrol/ Anthony Roberts for TD Tarver and Anathema/ Michael Fisher for Nick Roberts and Twisted City/ Michael Fisher for Jeremy Mac and Reaper Act 1/ Essel Pratt for Essel Pratt and Bloodlust/ Dan Chadwick for Dan Chadwick and Red Light Falling/ Michael Fisher for Andrews & Cautilli and Abigail/ Becky Narron for Daemon Manx and War of Dictates/ John Baltisberger for John Baltisberger and The Nightmare Hunter/ Michael Fisher for DA Roberts and Seven Exhumations/ Becky Narron for James G Carlson and Beast of Sorrows/ Becky Narron for James Watts and Secondhand Creeps/ Jeffery Kosh for Wales & Monks and Curse of Cain/ Hazal Kaya for catt dahmanReaper and Act 3/ Essel Pratt for Essel Pratt and Family/ Isaac Cooper for Isaac Cooper
- Audio book/cover: The Cautible Award
Event Horizon/ S W Salzman for catt dahman and Louisiana Saturday Night/ Carlie Williams for catt dahman and Twisted City/ Zach NeSmith and Zombies vs. Robots/ Karl A Nordman
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Berserker: Green Hell
By Lee Franklin Berserker Green Hell is a roller coaster ride through extreme horror as seen through the eyes of a young Aussie soldier in the stifling green hell of Viet Nam. The heat, humidity, and overpowering menace of the jungle and its natural inhabitants are not the only things hiding in this landscape. Pinny and his squadron are sent in after skirmishes to bring back tags and to report on their findings, not quite a clean-up crew and not meant as first contact with the enemy Viet Cong either. All hell breaks loose as Pinny, Taz, Doc, Snowy, Hammo, Cam, Chook and Wog-boy delve deeper into the jungle, coming upon one small village that shows them nothing |
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but blood and gore, it becomes apparent that something much more than a gunfight happened here. Pinny, a trained tracker, notices footprints in the mud leading the opposite direction, much larger footprints than most soldiers have. They are attacked several times by men much larger than they should have been, only lending more confusion to the chaos.
Fleeing deeper into the jungle, their sense of unease ever growing, they try to make their rendezvous point for extraction but another attack from something overwhelms them, something huge, that stands upright, with massive claws. Soon after, they encounter a squad of US soldiers and a mysterious American base, hidden deep in the jungle, where it should not have been. Rescue at last, or was it? Pinny and his remaining guys have no choice but to follow the American’s into the mysterious base, where they hope to recover and regroup with a new plan for extraction. Things go from bad to worse as new discoveries are made in the depths of that hidden base, things that may cost them not only their humanity but their souls. This novel plays out like a military movie with some of the most horrific scenarios I have ever read. Four gory gold stars for Berserker: Green Hell.
Fleeing deeper into the jungle, their sense of unease ever growing, they try to make their rendezvous point for extraction but another attack from something overwhelms them, something huge, that stands upright, with massive claws. Soon after, they encounter a squad of US soldiers and a mysterious American base, hidden deep in the jungle, where it should not have been. Rescue at last, or was it? Pinny and his remaining guys have no choice but to follow the American’s into the mysterious base, where they hope to recover and regroup with a new plan for extraction. Things go from bad to worse as new discoveries are made in the depths of that hidden base, things that may cost them not only their humanity but their souls. This novel plays out like a military movie with some of the most horrific scenarios I have ever read. Four gory gold stars for Berserker: Green Hell.
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London 1890s. Out of the Thames’ fetid depths the undead rise to feast upon the living. While floaters seek blood, another army takes advantage of the chaos. Boiling out of their rookeries of crime, marauders swarm through London’s affluent neighborhoods looting and burning. While the beleaguered police and the Queen’s army battle twin plagues—human and inhuman—London’s criminal youth gangs join forces to save their city. Will Tagget, leader of the Lambeth Lads, together with his enemies Bill Drummond of the Drury Lane Gang, bull-necked George Fish of the Elephant and Castle Gang, shillelagh-wielding Dirk Bogart of the New Cut Gang, Quincy Bird of City Road, along with their female counterparts—Lambeth Kate, Queen Jane, New Cut Beth, Razor Lil and Dirty Deidre—set out on an adventure the telling of which might earn a man a lifetime of free drinks. If he lives to tell it. Will these violent youths be able to put aside their rivalries long enough to get the job done? |
From Garrett Boatman, author of 80’s horror classic Stage Fright, and Bram Stoker Award®-winning Crystal Lake Publishing comes the dreadpunk novella FLOATERS. When a plague of living dead rise from the Thames’ fetid depths, can Victorian London’s hooligan gangs put aside their rivalries long enough to save their city?
Available from Crystal Lake or Amazon. 
He's the master of disaster, the guru of gore, the doctor of doom, the duke of death and destruction. Superstar Izzy Stark has the power to make your dreams--and nightmares--come true. The show's about to begin. Don't miss his command performance!
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“PEAKY BLINDERS MEETS RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD…BLOODY, VIOLENT FUN!”—Todd Keisling, Stoker award nominated author of Devil's Creek
“A TALE OF LONDON’S SCUM THAT IS VISCERAL, SHOCKING, AND FAST, BOATMAN’S FLOATERS IS HISTORICAL HORROR AT ITS BEST.”—Multiple Bram Stoker Award-winning author Lee Murray
Next steps for new authors: what to do next?
By Candace Nola
The world of self-publishing is not an easy one to navigate. Often, knowing what to do next can be confusing and overwhelming, especially if you begin looking for answers online. The sheer volume of information, websites and apps all geared towards authors is staggering. I hope to shed a bit of light on some of these issues in this on-going series in our HAG newsletter.
If you have already published, then congratulations! You have achieved a huge accomplishment, but now, how do you go about letting the world see what you have achieved. For starters, look at contacting book reviewers and getting some ARC’s into their hands. What’s an ARC? This just means Advanced Review Copy. Typically a digital file that you can email to multiple reviewers that can be a PDF, mobi file or ePub file. Once a reviewer has the ARC, they can read it with the intention of posting a review for you on Amazon or goodreads.
You should never pay for a review as this is not an ethical practice and their integrity cannot be guaranteed. You can only offer an ARC in exchange for an honest review, that’s all. Whether it is good or bad, is a chance that you take when you publish a book, and completely relies upon whether your reader enjoyed the story or not. Be very wary of so-called “professional book reviewers” on sites like Fiverr, or Instagram, offering to get you hundreds of reviews or put your book in the hands of thousands, these are usually scams or are offers made by people from foreign countries where it is more acceptable to charge for book reviews.
How can you find ethical reviewers? By joining the various author & writer groups on Facebook and interacting with people. Get to know the community and find out who does book reviews, there are many groups on FB that are run by book reviewers and many legitimate book reviewers can be found on instagram that you can reach out to. They will not charge you but offering them the book or file to read and review for free is standard practice. Do not expect a book reviewer to buy your book first, but they typically will buy a copy if they enjoyed it.
By Candace Nola
The world of self-publishing is not an easy one to navigate. Often, knowing what to do next can be confusing and overwhelming, especially if you begin looking for answers online. The sheer volume of information, websites and apps all geared towards authors is staggering. I hope to shed a bit of light on some of these issues in this on-going series in our HAG newsletter.
If you have already published, then congratulations! You have achieved a huge accomplishment, but now, how do you go about letting the world see what you have achieved. For starters, look at contacting book reviewers and getting some ARC’s into their hands. What’s an ARC? This just means Advanced Review Copy. Typically a digital file that you can email to multiple reviewers that can be a PDF, mobi file or ePub file. Once a reviewer has the ARC, they can read it with the intention of posting a review for you on Amazon or goodreads.
You should never pay for a review as this is not an ethical practice and their integrity cannot be guaranteed. You can only offer an ARC in exchange for an honest review, that’s all. Whether it is good or bad, is a chance that you take when you publish a book, and completely relies upon whether your reader enjoyed the story or not. Be very wary of so-called “professional book reviewers” on sites like Fiverr, or Instagram, offering to get you hundreds of reviews or put your book in the hands of thousands, these are usually scams or are offers made by people from foreign countries where it is more acceptable to charge for book reviews.
How can you find ethical reviewers? By joining the various author & writer groups on Facebook and interacting with people. Get to know the community and find out who does book reviews, there are many groups on FB that are run by book reviewers and many legitimate book reviewers can be found on instagram that you can reach out to. They will not charge you but offering them the book or file to read and review for free is standard practice. Do not expect a book reviewer to buy your book first, but they typically will buy a copy if they enjoyed it.
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Meet the Creeps Bio for Candace Nola
Candace Nola is a Pittsburgh author with 3 published novels currently on Amazon. Breach was her debut novel, published in Nov. 2019, followed by Beyond the Breach, published Dec. 22, 2020. Her third novel, Hank Flynn, was published in July of 2021. She also had a short story published in the Secondhand Creeps anthology in May of 2021, that she co-authored with Sam Hill of the U.K. She is also a new member of the Horror Authors Guild. She began her horror website in Jan. of 2020 to use as an author website and to help promote other indie authors in the industry. Her interview series, The Dark Dozen, was well-received in fall of 2020 and she began to do more book reviews, author interviews and new release features on her website. Original content was added along with a newsletter and Uncomfortably Dark Horror has morphed into the "go-to place" for the newest in horror book news. She is currently working on a short story for an invite-only anthology as well as her fourth novel that is set for release in late 2021. She is a mother of three kids, has a day job at a large health insurance corporation and spends almost all of her free time writing, editing, or posting features to her website. She also enjoys pour painting with her son, shopping trips with her daughters and loves to be at a beach, anytime |
You can find her on Twitter, Instagram, Tik Tok and Facebook as well as her website, UncomfortablyDark.com.
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Questions:
Where did the idea for “What Will The Neighbors Say?” come from?
This is a bit difficult as this story was the result of a challenge that I entered on FB, to co-write a story with another author, not knowing ahead of time what they wrote. I had two days to write an ending to Sam Hill’s beginning. Sam had written a really creepy beginning about a boy moving into a town where things seemed to be on a loop of some sort. It was really difficult to think of an ending but I knew it had to involve something shocking, to fit the title and to try to illustrate why they possibly had to move in the first place.
I came up with the werewolf transition because it's something I had always wanted to try to write and I figured would also give it that true horror trait that it needed. To fit the loop idea, I made it evolve into a sort of experiment where doctors are experimenting on this new breed of werewolf in order to discover how the subject originated but he is struggling with amnesia. As a result, they keep looping the same event of his first change through his memories in an effort to trigger his blocked memories.
When did I feel Called to entertain with stories?
Being an author has been a life-long dream, ever since childhood. It was a dream that I gave up on to get a day job and raise my kids and figured that I would just be content reading. In early 2019, a friend tricked me into co-writing a story with her and then just let me run with it. By late november, I published that story under the title of “Breach” and haven’t looked back.
Who do I consider my inspirations to be?
Edgar Allen Poe is my first influence, then Stephen King, Louisa May Alcott, Emily Dickinson. I read a lot of classics as a child, followed by screenplays, poetry, romance and then discovered fantasy and horror. I stayed with horror through my teen years and it just stayed with me. I was always drawn to the darker side of life.
Why do I write?
Because it’s who I am, it's who I have always been. I may never be one of the best, but I know that I am good at it. I have always been a natural writer and poet and there is nothing else that I ever really wanted to do in life. I am currently living my one and only dream and it's been worth every minute.
How do readers contact me?
Follow me on my website at uncomfortablydark.com or at Twitter @candace_nola.
You can find me on Tik Tok @uncomfortablydarkhorror.
Where did the idea for “What Will The Neighbors Say?” come from?
This is a bit difficult as this story was the result of a challenge that I entered on FB, to co-write a story with another author, not knowing ahead of time what they wrote. I had two days to write an ending to Sam Hill’s beginning. Sam had written a really creepy beginning about a boy moving into a town where things seemed to be on a loop of some sort. It was really difficult to think of an ending but I knew it had to involve something shocking, to fit the title and to try to illustrate why they possibly had to move in the first place.
I came up with the werewolf transition because it's something I had always wanted to try to write and I figured would also give it that true horror trait that it needed. To fit the loop idea, I made it evolve into a sort of experiment where doctors are experimenting on this new breed of werewolf in order to discover how the subject originated but he is struggling with amnesia. As a result, they keep looping the same event of his first change through his memories in an effort to trigger his blocked memories.
When did I feel Called to entertain with stories?
Being an author has been a life-long dream, ever since childhood. It was a dream that I gave up on to get a day job and raise my kids and figured that I would just be content reading. In early 2019, a friend tricked me into co-writing a story with her and then just let me run with it. By late november, I published that story under the title of “Breach” and haven’t looked back.
Who do I consider my inspirations to be?
Edgar Allen Poe is my first influence, then Stephen King, Louisa May Alcott, Emily Dickinson. I read a lot of classics as a child, followed by screenplays, poetry, romance and then discovered fantasy and horror. I stayed with horror through my teen years and it just stayed with me. I was always drawn to the darker side of life.
Why do I write?
Because it’s who I am, it's who I have always been. I may never be one of the best, but I know that I am good at it. I have always been a natural writer and poet and there is nothing else that I ever really wanted to do in life. I am currently living my one and only dream and it's been worth every minute.
How do readers contact me?
Follow me on my website at uncomfortablydark.com or at Twitter @candace_nola.
You can find me on Tik Tok @uncomfortablydarkhorror.
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