THE HORROR WRITERS ASSOCIATION (HWA) is a nonprofit organization of writers and publishing professionals around the world, dedicated to promoting dark literature and the interests of those who write it.
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2023 Bram Stoker Awards
Winners & Nominees Lists
What inspired you to start writing?
My pre-teen years were limned to AOL chat room roleplays and Livejournal blogging. Role-playing has a kink connotation to it (unless you worked in retail, by which, it’s the hellish exercise you’re coached with to practice customer service scenarios), but before websites like FanFiction.net or AO3 were popularized, roleplaying was the sort of way you’d collaboratively generate stories.
Who are some of your favorite LGBTQ characters in horror?
Most of my favorites are the ones I have written because they are the types of characters that I want to see and don’t really find anywhere else yet. Aside from my own though, it may be considered ‘typical’ of me, but I really like the characters from "The Vampire Chronicles" by Anne Rice. They are all so complex and morally gray, and all so damn charismatic.
What inspired you to start writing?
Writing came to me in my teens because none of the mainstream media I had access to included people like me, so I started making up my own stories. That makes it sound like an inspiring turn of events but really it was section 28 in the UK (prohibition of “promotion of homosexuality”) which was a horror story in itself that did significant harm to many people, and one we’re currently seeing repeated.
What was it about the horror genre that drew you to it?
It’s often about the beauty of the prose, but also It’s all about that adrenaline rush, yeah? I love that horror makes me feel something. You know, that “on the edge of your seat” feeling, with your heart pumping, the hair on your arm standing on end and your palms getting all clammy. Being scared is thrilling. It lets you know you’re alive.
What inspired you to start writing?
I’m an only child. When I grew up, I spent a lot of time on my own making up stories. With my legos and stuffed animals, I would while away entire weekends in perfect bliss concocting elaborate dark fantasy worlds involving aliens, ghosts, and monsters. (Godzilla was a particular favorite.) Eventually, the toys disappeared, but the stories stuck around.
How do you feel the LGBTQ community has been represented thus far in the genre and what hopes do you have for representation in the genre going forward?
So in a lot of ways, there have been massive improvements in the last couple of decades. Where before we had Buffalo Bill and other such characters whose queerness is portrayed as a sort of villainy, now we’re getting a wild array of queer characters (often created by queer authors!) and this is wonderful news.
What inspired you to start writing?
It’s a cliché, but some of my first friends were books and book characters. It’s still true. I was always creating stories and narratives in my head. Plus, they kept giving me crayons and pencils as a little kid and wanted me to use them. I was inspired by the power of words to take me places, to evoke emotions, to escape reality. I wanted to share my inner worlds and stories.
How do you feel the LGBTQ community has been represented thus far in the genre and what hopes do you have for representation in the genre going forward?
I just want to see a lot more writing where the trans, queer, or disabled character is the detective–not the monster. Or if they are the monster–make it a super delicious, seductive, world-devouring one.
Publishing great horror authors proved more rewarding than he’d imagined,
so Crystal Lake Entertainment founder and CEO Joe Mynhardt took it a step further. He’s expanded what started as a small press into “a platform for launching careers.” In that spirit, Crystal Lake’s recent two-volume Shadows and Ink writing guide serves as a comprehensive education course for aspiring horror authors. In this month’s edition of Nuts & Bolts, Joe has agreed to share some advice on what beginning writers should know.
What inspired you to start writing?
I was a quiet child and came from a family of readers. I was also a child who had really bad asthma and allergies at a time when medicine hadn’t advanced enough to be enough of some help for five-year-old little me, which is when I started to entertain myself when I was in bed sick by writing my own stories and drawing illustrations for them.
What inspired you to start writing?
Working in the ER during the COVID pandemic was difficult, seeing all the suffering and death. My spirit was broken. I was so burned out/anxious/depressed and needed something to work towards to put a spark back in me. While cleaning our basement, I came across a bucket list I wrote in college. On that list? Write a novel. I decided to go for it.
What inspired you to start writing?
I began writing in a diary at age ten. Exploring my thoughts at length without the pressure of interacting with someone else appealed to me. Writing gave me a safe medium for exploring my thoughts and interests. In eighth grade, I wrote fiction in English class and found it intensely absorbing.
What inspired you to start writing?
I was someone who always wrote fiction and poetry from an early age as an emotional outlet. I was always ‘different’ as a child and bullied. So, the very act of transporting my mind into another story, character, and events was - and still is - a way to deal with emotions at the end of each day. It is escapism as its heart and telling a story that is uniquely mine.
What inspired you to start writing?
I’ve always wanted to be a writer, from the moment I first learned to read. After I realized I could (and then did, all the time, voraciously), I decided I wanted to write my own stories. I started reading Stephen King at an obscenely young age—it was the 80s; I think there are lots more kids like me who cut our fangs on It and The Tommyknockers—and when he sent me an autographed copy of the Cycle of the Werewolf/Silver Bullet screenplay when I was eight, that was it. I had to be a writer.
What has writing horror taught you about the world and yourself?
About myself? I really like scaring people, heh. I’ve had a few people tell me my work gave them nightmares, and I’m probably prouder of that than I should be. About the world? The world is full of scary things, but it’s possible to get through those things, to process them, to move past them. Sometimes it takes a lot of creativity, and maybe a dark sense of humor, but it can be done.
What inspired you to start writing?
I have cerebral palsy, so when I was ten and everyone else was playing pretend outside, in their bodies, I realized that I was more comfortable playing pretend in my mind, sitting still. When we got a computer at home, Microsoft Word was a gaming application for me: an open-world simulator where I had complete control of everything that happened.
What was it about the horror genre that drew you to it?
For years, I avoided horror because my life was horror enough as a child and young adult. I was that teenager in the movie theater who stuck my fingers in my ears and sang la-la-la with my eyes shut, desperately trying not to tip into hyper-vigilance as my friends laughed at the jumpscares.
What inspired you to start writing?
I grew up in Appalachia in a family where storytelling was highly prized. I can’t count the number of hours I spent hearing relatives and neighbors tell stories, some true, some maybe not so true but entertaining all the same. From a very early age, I wanted to participate in creating and telling stories, and books were the form that I could practice in private.
SAN DIEGO, CA--The 2023 Bram Stoker Awards® took place on June 1, during the Annual Bram Stoker Awards® Banquet at StokerCon™ 2024. Winners received awards for superior achievement in the following categories:
