DENIED! OWNED! TWICE!

That's right, gentle readers - two Paffenroth books on the preliminary ballot for the Stoker Award, no Paffenroth books on the final ballot. Unless they'd revoked my membership and sent me a dead cat in the mail, that's got to be considered the maximum ownage and denial possible.

My ego is bruised, but not crushed. I still have one of the bad boys on the shelf, and I have two books coming out this year that are better than either of the two that I had on this year's preliminary ballot. Setbacks keep you moving forward.

EDITED: Hold the phone. Having gotten over my own butt-hurt, I now see that Braunbeck's Mr. Hands didn't make the final ballot. Okay, now I can say, without it sounding like sour grapes, that there's something wrong with that list. I mean, Lisey's Story over The Road was going to be hard enough to live down.