The Horror Writers Association today announced the nominees for the 2009 Stoker Awards, and I’m extremely happy to say that my novella, The Hunger of Empty Vessels, has made the final ballot in the category of Superior Achievement in Long Fiction.

Since so many people have already posted the entire ballot, I’ll save pixels by sending you elsewhere for the complete list of categories.

But here are the four finalists in mine:

Dreaming Robot Monster by Mort Castle (MIGHTY UNCLEAN)
The Hunger of Empty Vessels by Scott Edelman (Bad Moon Books)
The Lucid Dreaming by Lisa Morton (Bad Moon Books)
Doc Good’s Traveling Show by Gene O’Neill (Bad Moon Books)

Note that whatever happens, there’s already a clear winner here—Bad Moon Books, which published three of the four finalists.

As much as I’m pleased to be on a ballot with three very worthy writers, I must admit that there’s one who pleases me more than the rest—Gene O’Neill, with whom I attended Clarion in 1979. If you’d told us back then that this would happen down the road someday, I don’t think either one of us would have believed you.

Here we are last year in San Jose at the World Fantasy Convention, 31 years after we met.

Good luck, Gene!

BTW, this is my fifth Stoker nomination. My previous nominations were for:

2008 Short Fiction: “Petrified”
2007 Long Fiction: “Almost the Last Story by Almost the Last Man”
2003 Short Fiction: “The Last Supper”
1997 Short Fiction: “A Plague on Both Your Houses”

I know I’m nowhere close, but does anyone out there have any idea who the bull goose loser is for the Stokers?