Friday Quick Links

This Is Horror, a UK website/publisher, has announced its annual award nominees, and my anthology with Masumi Washington, Hanzai Japan is one. I don't know much about TiH except that they published a very good e-novella by Nathan Ballingrud, but their ballot is very good—I only saw one "What the HELL?" nominee there, and I hadn't even read that work; the author is just historically awful and may have improved. It's a public vote, so I voted thusly:

Novel of the Year
A Head Full of Ghosts by Paul Tremblay
Skullcrack City by Jeremy Robert Johnson

(Didn't read any of the novellas, so left them out.)

Short Story Collection of the Year
Get in Trouble: Stories by Kelly Link

Anthology of the Year
Hanzai Japan: Fantastical, Futuristic Stories of Crime From and About Japan, edited by Nick Mamatas and Masumi Washington (Yeah, I voted for myself. I'm the fuckin' best.)
Cthulhu Fhtagn!, edited by Ross E. Lockhart

Fiction Magazine of the Year
Apex Magazine
Black Static

Publisher of the Year
Word Horde
Lazy Fascist Press

Podcast of the Year
The Horror Show with Brian Keene

Film of the Year
It Follows
What We Do in the Shadows

Artist of the Year
Joey Hi-Fi
Vincent Chong

You should vote to, for whatever you read and liked.

Speaking of reading and liking, The Last Weekend (only nine copies left on amazon!) is one of io9's books everyone will be talking about this month, which is odd because so far it's mostly just been me talking about it. I am, apparently, "Mamatas is always good for a weird time", which is what she said. One wrinkle here is that these ad-posts have Amazon buttons and Gawker Media actually says how many people buy via their link. Over the course of a year, you can see that sometimes hundreds or even thousands of people bought through Gawker, which "may" receive a commission. Anyway, if you felt like giving people who like antagonizing Hulk Hogan money—and since Roddy Piper is dead—why the hell not?

In other, and by other I mean actual, news, a bit on fire-starting. The Atlantic has been positioning itself as the liberal rag right-wingers can enjoy, while Reason is the stopped clock right twice a day libertarian rag. Neither of them know anything about fire, as it turns out. Burn bans out West are there for a reason, and the second fire only damaged one acre thanks to firefighters pulled away from a larger lightning-caused fire. The issue of mandatory minimums is different than the issue of whether five years is too harsh for two arsons. Five years is just fine.