The deadline for the 2024 Splatterpunk Awards nominations is Sunday, Dec. 31.
Works of Extreme Horror fiction published in 2023 are eligible, and anyone can email their nominations to splatterpunkawards@gmail.com. The emails must be received by 11:59 p.m. Eastern Standard Time.
Co-founded by authors Wrath James White and Brian Keene, the Splatterpunk Awards honor the best of Extreme Horror fiction in five categories: Best Novel, Best Novella, Best Short Story, Best Collection, and Best Anthology.
I enjoy Extreme Horror fiction immensely, and there have been so many releases in the sub-genre since the inception of the Splatterpunk Awards in 2018. To keep it all organized, I compiled a complete list of all the Splatterpunk Awards winners and nominees.
The most nominated author of the first six years is Christine Morgan. Morgan has received at least one nomination every year (2018-2023) for a total of nine with one win.
Four other authors are tied for second-most with seven nominations each. They are Ryan Harding (four wins); Edward Lee (two wins); Kristopher Triana (two wins); and Matt Shaw (no wins).
This year, I read a ton of Extreme Horror fiction, and I’d like to mention a couple of the works that I felt compelled to nominate.
The first is Bryan Smith’s Dead End House. Smith has been nominated six times for Splatterpunk Awards and won two. He has nothing to prove, but he keeps delivering what I call “horror for horror fans.” He tackles horror like Elvis tackled rock-and-roll.
Exhibit A is the first paragraph of Dead End House.
“The radio in Lara Kincaid’s vintage cherry-red Chevy Nova was tuned to the local classic rock station, with Blue Oyster Cult’s ‘This Ain’t the Summer of Love’ issuing from the speakers at a low volume. It was a warm night and the windows were partly rolled down. Things were getting hot and heavy in the back seat. It was about damn time.”
It sounds like a scene from Meat Loaf’s “Paradise by the Dashboard Light,” except it’s a Bryan Smith novel, so you know it’s going to be “Nightmare by the Dashboard Light.” And paradise? It ain’t nowhere in sight … unless you’re a fan of Extreme Horror fiction. Anyway, Dead End House is another solid novel by one of the most consistent authors in the sub-genre and an easy nomination for me.
The other one I want to mention is by an author who’s never been nominated. It’s John Everson, who’s another one of my all-time favorite writers. His novel The Night Mother, the sequel to his Bram Stoker Award-nominated NightWhere, should get him his first Splatterpunk Awards nomination.
The Night Mother has angels and devils and a secret sex club run by demons that use it to lure sexually depraved humans into their own world of extreme sexual depravity. This is hardcore horror, folks. Extreme is a mild adjective for this book. It makes 50 Shades of Grey look like an aquatic therapy class at the local senior center.
Even two-time Splatterpunk Awards winner Edward Lee says it’s “hardcore stuff,” adding that “Everson’s story bulldozes the reader through macabre edge-of-your-seat terror, diabolical chases, and occult designs, and in vivid scalpel-sharp prose he delivers the most exciting and original novel I’ve read so far this year.”
Original is the key word here. Everson is such a talented writer. I mean, you have to be to pull off some of this stuff and make it seem plausible. Anyway, The Night Mother is another easy nomination for me to make.
So, if you enjoyed a work of Extreme Horror fiction published in 2023, now’s the chance to voice your support by sending the email to splatterpunkawards@gmail.com.
The Splatterpunk Awards are presented at KillerCon in Austin, Texas, every year. The ceremony also includes the J.F. Gonzalez Lifetime Achievement Award and Hall of Legends inductees.
In 2024, my hope is someone will finally present the Lifetime Achievement Award to Wrath James White. I know he’s a co-founder, but the man wrote The Resurrectionist. For criminy’s sake! Just do it. I joke, but seriously, that’s something I’d like to see sooner rather than later.
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