#StokedforStokerCon

#StokedforStokerCon

For those of you who follow me on Twitter, this is something you will likely see a lot of in the upcoming days and weeks as Stoker Con 2019 takes place in May!!!!!!!!!! I am seriously counting the days till I board the plane for this event…I am SO STOKED.  Sorry, I am not sorry for any excessive silliness that may be perceived by this pun.

I just can’t read enough horror novels these days. One of the significances of Stoker Con for me is being able to connect with other people who share my interest in the literary world of horror. My personal stories are not quite ready to be pitched, so I am looking forward to doing a lot of fan-girling at this event.

An awesome event that takes place at Stoker Con is the Stoker Awards.  When my husband presented my ticket to Stoker Con to me he mentioned that he made sure to pay the price for me to go to the Stoker Awards banquet.  So in the next month I will be reading a lot of the nominations that I haven’t read yet that I can get my hands on, using the library and Kindle Unlimited as much as possible.

…but of course, I’ve already read a handful of the books that are nominated.

For Superior Achievement in A Novel:

The Outsider by Stephen King.  I liked this book SOOO much better than I liked his book Elevation. While it does not get into more of the horror components until the last third of the book, the mystery and thriller components of this book make me feel like I am reading the Stephen King that I love.

However one of the cruel jokes of fate is that on the weekend that Stoker Con will be taking place he will be doing a presentation at the Word Play event in Minneapolis hosted by the Loft Literary Center. Yes, this is the very Loft Literary Center that I’ve attended numerous classes and events at because it is in my own urban backyard. In fact, I was even at the event that they announced that Word Play will take place at.  They did not announce the author line up for the Word Play event until after I made all of my travel arrangements for Stoker Con. 

Unbury Carol by Josh Malerman. After Josh Malerman’s success with Bird Box I had to read this book. I was really impressed by this story about a woman who has a condition where she keeps dying. It had a completely different style from Bird Box and was still a very compelling book to read.  After experiencing his excellent writing I am excited to read his new book, Inspection and STOKED that he will be at Stoker Con because he is a new favorite author of mine.

Cabin at the End of the World by Paul Tremblay.  With this book my husband had to hide the book from me because I read the book faster than he could listen to the audiobook. But part of the reason why I was able to read it so fast was because it was too thrilling to put down.

For Superior Achievement in a First Novel, I have read:

Rust Maidens by Gwendolyn Kiste. I mentioned reading this book on my blog post about Ladies of Horror Fiction. I read it back in February when my primary reading goal was to read as many female horror fiction authors as I could.

I am currently reading What Should Be Wild by Julia Fine. I have had a copy of this book on my Kindle for a while. One of the things I love about doing projects like this is it can help me dig in corners of my bookshelves for books that I already own but have been on my TBR list forever.

For Superior Achievement in Long Fiction:
(One of the things that I love about his particular category is that I love how I can read through novellas in one sitting and horror novellas are really easy to find on Kindle Unlimited).

Bitter Suites by Angela Yuriko Smith---I really enjoyed the concept of recreational dying as portrayed in this book. It definitely had some wonderful twists and turns

Body of Christ by Mark Matthews---Christian horror? Yes, please! My unused Masters of Divinity is NOT going to waste when I delve into the images and implications of a personal Jesus being built out of communion wafers!

While I have read a lot, when you look at the list of nominations there are still ALOT of books that I haven’t read.  But there is still time for me to do a lot of reading. But this event just can’t come fast enough.  I am so #StokedforStokerCon