Y’all. I made it.
“Glove Box” made the final ballot for the 2018 Bram Stoker Awards®! I am absolutely shocked and thrilled. I’ve gasped and grinned and danced and cried. I’m officially a two-time nominee, and it feels like a dream come true. (Winning would be the ultimate dream, of course, but I am not above a mini-dream or two.) What an incredible honor!
I’ve already talked about how surprised I was to make even the preliminary ballot. But I’m still surprised to make it to the next level. I’m surprised that my strange little story is reaching readers, and that they’re appreciating it. I’m surprised by how good it feels, even this second year. (No less wonderful than last year, in fact.) And frankly, I’m surprised by where I’ve found myself in my writing career.
Part of it, as I was explaining to my husband this weekend when the news came out, is that I don’t write for recognition. Don’t get me wrong; I crave and love praise and awards just as much as anyone. I’m not claiming superiority here. I just genuinely don’t expect it. It’s not why I sit down, day after day, and work silently by myself. I work so hard, and I dream of that work finding readers who love it. I write for myself, and I write for readers. I don’t write for awards.
But receiving recognition like this—it’s an indicator that I’m on the right path. I’ve been finding readers. Somehow, I’ve been finding readers and even keeping them. 😀 And, frankly, being recognized by an award as prominent as the Stokers isn’t just flattering; it’s useful in finding even more readers. I don’t have any numbers to back it up, but I bet “Glove Box” has been read by many times more people now that it’s on the ballot than it had been before. And that’s just really freaking cool, y’all. That’s the whole point—to be read.
But my surprise runs even deeper than that. I’ve dreamed of winning a Bram Stoker Award since I first learned of them. My dad, who I got much of my love of horror from, used to buy his next books based on that list. (Consequently, many of my stolen reads were from his shelf/that list.) It was one of my big dreams, to someday be among those authors I loved. As I got older and began pursuing this career in earnest, my expectations calibrated. I never imagined being nominated in my early thirties. I was prepared to wait decades to see that dream fulfilled. So I’m surprised to have brushed against it twice now. And to be candid: I always assumed it’d be for a novel if I did get there, so I am equally surprised by the path I’ve ended up taking.
I’ve always been a big dreamer. I’ve wanted to be a published author since I was in grade school. I wanted to become one of the famous literary giants that I so cherished reading, analyzing, and studying. It wasn’t just fame or glory. They touched me, heart and brain, and I wanted to do that. When I got into horror, I wanted to be among those giants who grace the Stoker lists. They touched me too, heart and brain, and I wanted to do that too. For whatever reason, I assumed those things were accomplished through writing novels and poetry. I have no idea why; I read and loved short stories too. Poe, O. Henry, etc.: they were just as cherished by me. But somewhere along the way I convinced myself that my true calling was poetry and that my claim to success would be novels.
Imagine my surprise at having built my career thus far largely from short stories and blogging.
Seriously, 7th grade me would be so disappointed. (Don’t worry Little Me; I haven’t even remotely given up on getting novels out there or landing a whole book of poems. Turns out it takes a bit longer than a year or two sometimes. 😉 )
I began blogging to “build a platform,” and I got in just after the boom and right before the bust. I like to say I’m grandfathered in; it’s very difficult to build momentum as a blogger now. But I made a decent start before blogs become a dime a dozen, and it led to amazing opportunities with even bigger group blogs like Writer Unboxed and LitReactor. Articles and blogs are now a vital part of my cobbled-together freelance income, which is part of what allows me to pursue writing novels and poetry. What’s more, it turns out that I absolutely love it. Some writers hate it, but blogging feels great to me. It allows me to connect more personally with readers, to teach, and to share my journey with fellow writers. It’s also a space to explore some of the topics that don’t fare as well in fiction, or are better suited to a more straightforward or open discussion.
I began experimenting with short stories to learn how to write, and to begin “building a name for myself.” I’d read somewhere that it’s difficult to get a novel published if you’re unheard of. With shorter works like poems and stories, it’s less risky for editors to publish new writers. So I set out to get stories published in magazines, journals, and anthologies and build myself a little resume that might help entice big publishers for my books. But just as with blogging, short stories have turned out to be an indispensable part of my income. Are they as good as a royalty check? No, but if I sell half a dozen short stories a year at professional rates, it helps keep me in the black. And they are not just helping me build a name for myself; so far, they’re kind of the only way I’m building a name for myself. (Sorry, Little Me; hardly anyone gets to live off of poetry, and even a byline at a big blog usually gets overlooked by casual readers.)
More importantly, it turns out that I adore writing short stories for their own sake. More so than I ever envisioned when I started. I think I might once have thought to use them as a stepping stone and drop them when I landed some novels. Now, I could never. I need short stories—emotionally, functionally, creatively. Just like poetry and blogs and novels, short fiction fills a part of my artistic life that other forms simply can’t fill. They’re an equal love, a unique passion. Do they sometimes fall to the back burner when a longer or larger project takes hold? Absolutely. I don’t fight the ebb and flow of it. But I always come back to shorts, where there’s a freedom and a brevity that speaks to me. I honestly cannot imagine my life without them.
So my nominations for the Stoker Awards are surprising in many ways. Surprising for the category I’m up for, surprising for how soon it’s happened, surprising for the story at bat, and surprising for the joy and encouragement it’s brought me. It’s not just the praise, or the honor. That is beautiful, fulfilling, thrilling! But the readers. The readers the nominations represent, and the feedback from them (you) about my work. To know that I’ve found readers and affected them in even vaguely, occasionally the same way those giants have affected me? That’s priceless.
Thank you, friends and readers. Come the awards in May, whether I win or not, I really *do* feel like I’ve already won. I’ve won motivation and reason to keep sitting down to work day after day, and to keep pushing against this crazy industry to get my writing (of all stripes) in front of readers who might want it. Because at least a few someones seem to want it. 🙂 Speaking of which, a story is calling. (Or is that a poem, or something longer…?)
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