"Vampire Lake" has snagged Lois Tilton's Good Story Award in her latest Short Fiction column over at Locus. In part, Tilton says of my forthcoming novella in Subterranean: Tales of Dark Fantasy 2: "This is it. In many anthologies there is a standout story, one that readers will always recall when the book comes to mind. ["Vampire Lake"] is the longest, darkest tale in the book, a dark dark fantasy in the Western mode... There is more than spatter here, there is hemorrhage. There is horror."Tilton also makes an interesting point about the Weird Western, writing that it's a subgenre which "not only tolerates but encourages hyperbole and highly-colored language." Which, in truth, is one of the major attractions for me. Stories like "Vampire Lake," "Durston" (in Lesser Demons), and "The Bars on Satan's Jailhouse" were flatout fun to write, allowing me to bust off the cinches more than a little bit and go for it.
I like that... and it's just one reason I'll be writing more Weird Westerns.
