I was incredibly honored (I keep wanting to use the word stoked) and excited to find out that The Forest of Hands and Teeth made it onto the Horror Writers Association‘s preliminary ballot for their annual Bram Stoker Awards for first novel (you can find the entire preliminary ballot here). I was even more thrilled to realize that mine is the only young adult novel to make the ballot for first novel!

Right now, the active members of HWA are voting on which books will make it from the preliminary ballot to the final ballot (voting ends Feb 15th and any active members of HWA would would like a .pdf of my book, email me – carrieATcarrieryan.com).
One of the things that really makes me so happy about this is that I read almost exclusively horror when I was a teen. It was Christopher Pike and RL Stine who kept me up until 3am on the weekends (and who taught me to speed read because I refused to go to bed until I knew how their books ended). These are the books I couldn’t put down and made me fall in love with reading. I look at the list of other books and authors on the preliminary ballot and I’m overwhelmed that I get to be mentioned in the same breath as they are. Thanks HWA!!