Gary Wins Two Bram Stoker Awards!

At the World Horror Convention held in Salt Lake City in March 2008, Gary won a Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in Anthology as co-editor for Five Strokes to Midnight; his novella in that same collection, "Afterward, There Will Be a Hallway" also won a Stoker. These awards represent Gary's 4th and 5th Stokers.

Gary's "Kiss of the Mudman" Receives an International Horror Guild Award!

On Thursday, November 2, 2007 The International Horror Guild Awards were presented in conjunction withe the World Fantasy Convention in Austin, Texas. Gary's novella "Kiss of the Mudman" (from Home Before Dark: The Collected Cedar Hill Stories, Volume 2) was honored with the IHG Award for Long Fiction. (A complete list of nominees and recipients can be found here)

Gary was unable to be present at the awards, so Gary's fellow writer and friend of 15 years, Tim Waggoner accepted on his behalf. Here's a transcript of the acceptance speech:

"Well, since Tim Waggoner is standing up here accepting this on my behalf, I have no choice but to believe one of 3 things has happened: 1) Pigs are indeed soaring through the skies; 2) Hell has experienced an unprecedented drop in temperature; or, 3) The rumors about Joe Hill having run out of shelf space are true.

"I am truly sorry that I cannot be here with you, but my real-world job found it was unable to do without me this weekend -- nor I without its paycheck.

"This is stunning, and I cannot express to the IHG and its judges how honored I am that you saw fit to bestow this award upon "Kiss of the Mudman" -- not only because it was nominated along with Joe Hill's extraordinary "Voluntary Committal", Laird Barron's majestic "The Imago Sequence" -- a story upon which enough praise cannot be heaped -- and the amazing Kim Newman's "The Serial Murders" -- but also because I was convinced that only 5 people read the story when the second Cedar Hill collection was released, 2 of them myself. This may sound like so much smoke being blown in the air, but I was genuinely honored by the nomination and would have been more than happy with that, knowing that the IHG and its judges -- among the most well-read and demanding you'll ever encounter -- thought enough of "Mudman" to even put it on the same list as the other three superb works by my fellow nominees.

"The word "honor" gets bandied about with distressing carelessness these days, and because of that may have lost some its power, but I am hard-pressed to think of a better word to use. You honor my work with this, and you honor me, and I am humbled. I want to congratulate Joe, Laird, and Kim on their nominations; I want to thank Paul Miller at Earthling Publications for having the faith in the Cedar Hill stories to publish the trilogy of collections; I want to thank my wife, Lucy Snyder, for continuing to permit me to be her husband; I want to thank my friend John Nitzinger for the title of the novella; and I want to thank the IHG and its judges for not only this wonderful award, but for thinking enough of the story to nominate it in the first place.

"Lastly, I want to dedicate this award to the memory of two wonderful writers who are no long with us: this is for Charles L. Grant, who made me uncomfortably aware of the whispers in the shadows; and, finally, for my dear friend and second father, J.N. Williamson, who I think would be as surprised and proud right now as I am.

"Thank you. I am honored."